


Lizbob Supernatural Watching Notes (season 13)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Watching Notes [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog, watching notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 03:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 183,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16865062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. 13x01

The common pronunciation around these parts for “Nougat” is “Nugget” FYI

There’s a secondary mission here to find out WHY DID DABB TWEET “BUTT SHAKE”?

Expectations: I’d say a good 95% new plot action nonsense to 5% mourning and we’ve seen all of it in fragments because they’re spoiling the good stuff to lure us in; we’re doing well as a season if Asmodeus isn’t horrifically hammy and looks like he’ll be able to carry all the Buckleming episodes they’ll surely shove him in, and Jack is either not a pillock or is clearly *supposed* to be a pillock and the writing reassures us of that, although I did start to warm up to him in those tiny glimpses of promo stuff so we might be good there.

Aside from that I’m so superbly chill about this season (not worried about Cas, assuming Mary needs to get back as well, I’m just going on trust that Michael is well cast based on the actor’s fanbase after scrolling his twitter the other day and the fact he seems cool in the promo stuff in a way that does not make me nervous unlike the other 2 new characters, and like no preconceptions about what I need this season to be) that I’ve actually achieved what scientists may have thought was unpossible… I made it through an entire hiatus embedded in the heart of a wanky fandom and I don’t really have strong opinions or needs for about what’s to come :P

FUCK ME UP, DABB.

-

OH THE TITLE CARD IS GOING TO BE GOOD THIS YEAR

I say after just seeing “the road so far” because that looks classic. I can’t remember which other season it most looks like because I’m way too hype but it looks good.

Gah I have the Worst Song Comprehension in the entire world WHAT IS THIS? There’s just a montage of TFW hugs of various types going on and

“I never opened myself this way” and Dean in 12x22 opening up Mary and then the FREAKING GRENADE LAUNCHER MOMENT okay so the recap definitely is telling us the meta theme of season 12 in case we missed is so we’re all on the same footing for season 13. This family loves each other a lot and we’re busting down walls.

I watched the rest of the “road so far” then said out loud, “No. NO.” as it wound up nursery first, because “no” are they not even going to show - OH SHIT IT’S THE SAME VIDEO AS THE ONE IN THE SUMMER. NO. We’re ending this thing on dead Cas and Dean.

If this is how they mean to play it, I think I wanna take back that “fuck me up Dabb” from the previous point.

-

OH NO  I got tagged in a post like this last week about the bit in 8x19 where Sam goes into Hell and there’s the woman there in one of the cages who is like “we’ve been waiting so long! You finally came!” and like… did I think she meant she was mistaking Sam for Lucifer, and I always think YES that is a GREAT reading for that scene and fuuuuuuck me I should have reblogged that post and gone looking for links to some of the other cool posts about that because that’s like one of the small redeeming things about 8x19 to me, because that is just such a good creepy amazing Sam thing and also I am still so freakin bitter that Lucifer was Nick in the cage because he should have looked like Sam and 11x09 and 11x10 should have been Sam v Lucifer!Sam moments because where the FUCK did Nick come from…

Anyway you can probably guess exactly how far I’ve got into this episode aka 1 entire one word line but it’s already completely fucked me up.

If you all don’t remember my season 12 experience, yes I am the biggest Destiel shipper on the planet but I actually get super hype for good Sam plot stuff and I dug every moment of the season 12 Sam stuff about his powers and everything and this is a confrontation that *I* personally think was built up and due because of the evolving way it’s going - they confronted his past, the parts he had no control over happening to him in season 12, and I surmised that season 13 ought to be about the parts that WERE in his control, and Sam coming to terms with some other old mytharc stuff that happened to him, the way he managed to fuck up the world on a cosmic scale that Jack will have to come to relate to and he can use to guide Jack…

So yeah, this is not the first time this has happened to Sam, but this is definitely the much much better, more potent way it’s happened and I am DELIGHTED and we’re 1 word into the season :D

-

*Dean stares at Cas* *stares at Cas* *stares at Cas* Yep I need to go shoot something.

-

YEAH GIANT FLOATING EYEBALL TITLE CARD I KNEW IT.

-

Sauron is the big bad, but where is the one ring.

-

More seriously fuck yeah that gives complete continuity between my watching notes from 12x23 to this one because I am pretty sure I stopped them (aside from final whimpering notes to wrap up) thinking about Sam and Jack with yellow eyes and how this all looped back to the start. And how that was the key visual imagery, the way that Jack had yellow eyes and Sam’s whole legacy of that stuff - things I’ve been screaming about since 12x12 and how it all came back into the story. I mean the scream I made in 12x12 when Ramiel flashed his eyes is a noise I’ve sort of low-key been making right until this point and I’m just so delighted about this imagery being given such a central place because it’s not JUST Jack’s eyes, even though he obviously has the most terrifying yellow fire floating around in his eyeballs, the colour is a motif that takes us right back to the beginning in terms of the story…

-

HECK YEAH MARY -

wait

this isn’t a recap going to a Mary scene

LOL SUBTLE DABB

This nursery, as we were saying after season 12 ended, is just *soaked* in the vibes of the original nursery from the show… I kinda think the bad energy in that place would probably have given Dean that nightmare ANYWAY but it’s symbolically super relatable to everything that’s going on, especially as he’s got to deal with re-losing Mary, and Sam’s dealing with the massive heap of themes about trauma from the Pilot onwards…

I’m sort of vibing with 6x01 re-doing the burning on the ceiling thing to re-start from the start (8x01 also re-started from the start but borrowed different imagery and also addressed Sam’s arc through the Trials stuff hence the 8x19 thing and also him talking about how pure he was in 8x21) - obviously we have been saying this all seems like a season 1 re-do in a weird way, especially taking the Winchesters back to basics (but in an awful way), and I think for Sam, just meeting Jack under those circumstances we ended the season on were enough to loop him back to the start, because baby in nursery and yellow eyes blah blah, but for Dean his trauma in the Pilot was Mary specifically (and 1x01 separated out him and Sam that his trauma was Mary, Sam’s was Jess - which 8x01 borrowed for Kevin and his girlfriend, because Kevin was always a Sam mirror and had glowing golden god power eyes when he was activated in 7x21)…

So yeah Dean just got a top up of Mary trauma because the fucking WEATHER around here is pilot mirrors.

-

I would assume also probably maybe that was a semi-magical nightmare but I would not fucking put it past them to just show us Dean having a bunch of nightmares and like 7x05 maybe where he woke up from a dead Cas dream, we get stuff like that to show his absolutely wrecked mental state so I’ll hold out hope it was kind of just Dean’s imagination tormenting him, because we’ve only seen his nightmares extremely rarely in the absolute worst situations.

Just as a “the show is about more than sam and dean” stance, fuck the shipping, it needs to be so obvious on screen that Dean is suffering from losing Mary AND Cas in a way where it’s obvious the dynamic can not just be Sam and Dean any more.

-

OH NO SEAGULLS

(Uh, I mean, they are by a big lake, but yeah they are a bad bad omen. I think there was meta about them circa 10x14, to give an idea of how bad hearing seagulls is.)

-

Wow Sam and Dean are having a lot of bad sleeps now.

-

“Wait, was that -” “Lucifer’s son.” look, Sam knows how Jack started his life. That he has the concept of “father”. That it’s about all he’s said and all he’s motivated by right now apparently. Sam sounds pretty freaked out and putting a LOT of weight on that concept - not “Kelly’s son” or “the nephilim” - the fact Jack was born, and asked about Lucifer, and then walked buck naked out of the room and now we ain’t got jack on Jack, like… This is a Lucifer related PROBLEM.

I just say, because I am pretty sure Sam’s gonna be defending the kid in a couple of minutes so I need to lay out all the thoughts on what Sam knows and his headspace I possibly can as I go.

-

Oh nooo Cas’s truck.

And I tell you what, [I wrote a meta after 12x23](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/161109584443/dabb-vs-cars-surprisingly-not-the-next-round-in) about how it was impossible to work out where Cas’s truck was parked in the entire final conflict, and there was no fucking WAY the Impala and the truck were within shot of each other. Well guess fucking what. They are easily contained within frame now. I know you could just say minor continuity error but that’s not why I’m yelling :P 

I’m yelling because I was writing about how the placement of their vehicles shows their closeness to each other or other metaphorical things (such as the no personal space parking job from 9x10 where Dean then pulled away and left the pimpmobile behind) and aside from the super dusty car, I am pretty sure I am saying that Cas’s truck has appeared in visible shot because now it’s not getting in the way of the action they can use it to symbolically show that Dean and Cas’s vehicles are basically flanking the shot - but also they’re so far apart and the house, representing Jack, and Kelly, and how Cas died, is between them.

-

(This meta business is like riding a bike :D)

-

Nakey Jack getting the same walk shot as Amara did.

Amara got it because creepy feet.

He’s getting it because penis.

-

Hey there’s the pirate place Dean’s going to punch.

-

Holy shit I have never laughed so hard at the show in my entire life. I had a coughing fit that’s scared the neighbour’s dog.

(wait, good laugh - 10x15 still owes me a drink)

Salty Butt Combo sounds good anyway.

(this must be why Dabb said “butt shake”, the fucker. The absolute fucker. I am going to kill him.)

-

I’m laughing on a meta level too (I mean, hysterically, out loud, but also meta) because especially in season 8 burgers were connected to humanity and Dean’s return from Purgatory, and Dean has a history on the show of eating cheesebutts all the time for various reasons… I mean… This is liiiitterally turning Dean’s favourite, metaphorically significant, food into butts.

I mean… do I just… run with it? I mean like… is this the new meta thing? We now have to associate Dean digging into a burger with eating ass? I mean what are you doing Dabb?

I actually have a headache now because I laughed too hard and too loud.

-

Please please tell me Jack comes into this place, accidentally kills these dudes, and leaves a trail of destruction that when their supervisor gets to the store to deal with it, the police are like… trying to deal with the bodies but also cracking up a little and finally she looks up and it’s like… HIGH SEAS BUTT COMBO

I mean that’s going to make it into the newspapers

-

Oh wait, the inventor of the Buttshake is the guy from the police station that was talking to Jack so he’s going to at least make it out of this scene.

-

See, that picture of Jack with pants on was in the PR photos and I was like “naaah” and defended that Jack did not have pants on and people didn’t believe - no one understood. I knew this was gonna happen and because I don’t lay down too much spec and what good would “Jack wanders around buck naked for like the entire first quarter of the episode” have done anyway so I was just making fun of him for being fully grown and naked in the hope that the fact he was naked was a major character trait because it was one of like 2 we knew about him… Yeah I’m feeling vindicated on a crack spec I can’t really prove, especially as I was joking that Sam shames him into manifesting pants but I mean… I knew. Guys, I knew.

This has gone from horror to stoner movie classic in about 2 minutes flat.

-

I fucking love this show.

-

ALL THE CREATIVE WAYS THEY HIDE JACK’S NAKEDNESS THOUGH.

I am gonna make a gifset if I can stop cry-laughing for long enough

-

“Hi baby! …. *How naked*?”

Yep.

-

I mean I think it’s adorable that Jack wandered down to the nearest place with more people to make enquiries but this is also wigging me out a bit because I thought that the smart thing to do would be to give him like all the functioning knowledge for this world (I do remember a post going around Tumblr that babies learn like 6x Les Mis amounts of words in the womb) BUT start him from scratch but that it would be super hard to pull off, and essentially they’ve decided to do exactly what I thought was going to be the most intelligent handling of the situation but not exactly the easiest, and he seems to really have been born with a single motivation and the most basic understanding of the world that his little baby cosmic supercomputer brain is going to have to piece together the entire world from context cues and natural intellect to deal with the rest…

I’m all for it as long as they handle his progression well. And don’t use him as the … butt … of the joke.

-

I assume we all know the butt thing was because Jack is naked and it was joking about the fact he’s wandering about butt out but they can’t show it so they’re just like butt butt butt on the menu board instead.

-

Promo scene! Oh no! We’re not thinking about it. Not over it from last night. Dean is piiiissed.

-

Sam saying he had it under control is interesting now we have seen the actual scene in question. Sam did not really have it under control. He was babbling uncertainly like, no I’m not your father and also btw that freaks me out because he HAS possessed me before and being mistaken for him is SUUUPER uncomfortable and he’s the reason for like 100% of my trauma past and present, and you’re freaking me out… And yeah, between scenes he’s decided they can’t hunt Jack, that even if he seems to be laser focused on finding his father there has to be hope for him. This context is important: That Sam knows Jack’s motivation and what it MEANS on a deeply horribly personal level and is defending him anyway. (I mean that “anyway” in the context of what Sam might think or feel rather than from my perspective where I can see it all from space and obviously Jack is not just any of this and anyway he’ll be hunting with them sooner or later and there’s presumably hope for Jack in this world…) But yeah, Sam knows how it is, searching for your father, for one thing. Which, interestingly, costuming aside, I don’t think there’s been MAJOR John and Lucifer parallels (hilarious that Lucifer changed his clothes just in time) in the same way that like, God and John were paralleled at a major narrative level. But now Jack wants to find his dad, which is the season 1 motivation for Sam and Dean, and that makes Lucifer and John narratively paralleled.

I don’t think Sam is necessarily defending that Jack came out the womb with a one track mind to find Lucifer (maybe he wants to kill him, we haven’t asked the guy his opinion yet) but that of course he thinks Jack can be reasoned with, saved from himself, and Sam relates heavily to being given powers beyond your control, and that there’s hope for Jack to have a normal-ish life etc. None of which can be accomplished by just killing him outright.

-

Dean’s just mad because Cas is dead and none of this would have happened if not for Jack

There’s literally NOTHING TO META over on the Destiel side of things

-

I am feeling the void that they just left Cas there while rushing out to deal with Jack but I guess he’s such an urgent problem Cas can wait and the house is remote enough that the milkman isn’t likely to come round and see Cas lying dead in the back garden.

-

“Before he hurts anyone else” - he barely hurt you guys, it’s more like he banged you up a bit and it was obviously a terrifying display of power and you don’t want him to do *even that* again but - I mean - Dean, honey.

-

those words are going to be my approach to him for a while I think :P

-

That sheriff car really pushing the Twin Peaks vibe just because of the mountains on it… Was comparing it last season… Watched Twin Peaks for the first time shortly before the finale and caught Dabb just outright stealing an entire line from one of its episodes.

-

Either the police station is super close or Jack has been unintentionally terrorising the guys in the pirate restaurant for like an hour while just staring at the sign. He’s thinking really hard about ordering the salty butt combo.

-

So we’re really pushing how creepy Jack is. I mean, duh, it’s the first episode and the first like 5 minutes of his screen time so he’ll smile scarily for us.

They definitely cast him well for looking like Kelly but also having a really evil looking smirk.

-

Oh no. Cas.

They said Dean put the sheet over him and he’s indoors so I guess that scene just happened in between things although right now we have no context for that so unless the angels say they didn’t move Cas inside and put a sheet over him we don’t have anything but actor confirmation this was a thing that happened, which is, of course, meaningless currency but makes for good headcanons… 

I mean I paused it on his dead face and went “waaaah” so I need to watch the rest of the scene but this is where I’m at going into it anywho.

-

Nope, one angel had to ask which means they are investigating the house which meeeeans that this was how Dean left Cas and it’s implied by the subtext that this is what happened in one of those “the subtext isn’t an ineffable cloud of possible happenstance, they just didn’t show it on screen so this fills in the blank for us” ways and I am not okaaaaaaaaay

Also we have them as our straw man angels - one saying he deserved better (LOL I HOPE ALL THE CAS STANS ARE HAPPY THAT’S BEEN SAID IN THE STORY) and one who is saying he didn’t. Representing that Heaven is conflicted about Cas’s actions and that some still revered him and some still loathed him.

-

Also the one who hated Cas called Kelly a “Brood Mare” so he’s a dick and I hope he gets stabbed pretty soon because we know there’s angel stabbings in this episode, and I just was not paying any attention whatsoever to them in the spoilers.

-

So the clothes Jack ended up in were spares from the police station. The kid who worked at the pirate place has come along with them because fuck responsibility (he is so the bad influence cool guy and I hope Jack kinda gets a little puppy love crush on him although he’s calling Jack weird still…)

That statement that no one is weird but normal in their own way was really nice though. Positive influences around Jack! Yeah!

-

Hahaha they literally said “Lost and Found” for where the clothes came from. Subtle. Jack’s lost and found - he’s a spare thing left behind, to be collected by the original owner or taken by someone who needs them more.

I used that phrase for a fic title back in season 12 about Mary about how she had been lost and found - died and came back - but also how she felt lost in the world now and then was found again when someone who related to her situation bonded with her and - okay it just turned into Charlie taking Mary back to her place and them making out but the point is that’s the emotional tone I was using the title for. I assume it also applies to Jack’s emotional state, but he hasn’t been “found” yet and I’m assuming Sam will do that for him, but I don’t think they’ll go back to their place to play video games, drink a few beers and learn the ways of luuurve.

(I know some people were (crack?) shipping them but even though Jack’s an adult now and technically only like… well, the actor would be within the window to have a thing with Sam and for it not to be weird age wise, but the whole framing of it… Jack acting like a grown up baby… yeah. We’ll see how it goes but the dynamic wider fandom has built for them has been with Jack as a child. The way I see it is more the intern dynamic if he joins up with TFW, but the way they relate to him will have to be as a child by necessity at least until he’s demonstrated emotional and intellectual maturity to them, and even then I think the impression will linger for a while…)

that was a weird side note… these notes are a disaster. Look it’s been MONTHS and I didn’t do rewatch notes for season 10 over hiatus like I meant so I am out of practice at this.

-

I also took a short break to chat with Mittens to confirm I wasn’t going crazy, that WAS the same song as the other video they released in the hiatus, and yep we got the Nothing Else Matters destiel music video as the season opener. No I haven’t processed it yet :D

-

Oh gosh Jack remembers his mom (HI KELLY, RIP) and he says she’s in Heaven (can’t recall his surname), and that memory was basically the footage from the USB stick, so he’s internalised that somewhere without watching it. It’s 2 influences, good and bad - a pure perfect dead mom (booo tropes the show was supposed to have ditched dramatically via Mary) and a literal satan father who “should have been there” but wasn’t - ironically removed from the narrative by the reformed pure dead mom from last season, Mary. These are the two biological influences on him, anyway. The 2 sides of his nature he may struggle with and the way the conflict may be framed for him.

Buuut and here’s a thing that might be contentious. So he knew Lucifer was supposed to be there when he was born and that he has to find him? He seems to have had that low level awareness of the world around him even in the womb, or at least was born with messages or some sort of communication from Lucifer lingering in his subconscious. Lucifer seemed linked to him while he was in the womb and I suppose this confirms it may have run both ways. Bleh.

The Jack As A Blank Slate characterisation is good because it excuses his actions from season 12 as done without knowing intent as he’s still figuring it all out now, but these lines do implicate him in the actions, by giving him a sense of at least semi-awareness, of having a missive from before he was even born, knowing that he was supposed to find his father.

I think that also goes with Kelly leaving him the USB stick with the message on it - he has a missive from both his parents. Kelly’s of course being so positive and hopeful for him, and Lucifer just kinda… being threatening to his goodness by wanting to be anywhere near him.

-

OH GOSH and he remembers burning Dagon. He did have an awareness of what was going on towards the end of the pregnancy!

“I remember the universe screamed” well that would be opening the AU I guess

-

yeah the thumbprinting thing isn’t going to do much good :P Blank slate imagery again - he’s not on the system, he’s new!

-

Oh boy the stoner movie kid is going to have a wild ride explaining this.

Jack’s getting better at full sentences though.

-

*blink blink*

-

And that was the Invention of Sarcasm.

Or he was telling the guy how stupid he was like… I have a superior intellect. I know this is a chair and this is a floor and this is the planet earth. Thank you, moronic human who keeps asking me the most obvious questions ever, it’s really helping me collect my thoughts and begin to understand my environment. Are all humans as stupid as you?

-

Uhoh, the “I’m hungry” did not bode well with Amara. But is this going to be a fake out? He didn’t seem about to attack the guy for his soul, so is he just going to have a whole ton of junk food when we get back and the guy is like yeah I knew he had the munchies so I raided my stash of M&Ms I keep here and it’s all good.

I really can’t tell how much of Jack’s story is Ominous Nephilim Shit and how much is Stoner Bro Movie Lols

-

Here’s the context about the curly butt fries line and destroying the world. People took it literally and it always seemed like this would be the context that Dean was putting fake words in Jack’s mouth because he does it ALL the time. Like the line about getting bored of croquet so you know what’s really fun? MURDER. I love it when he does this. I need to make him do it more when I write him.

-

Anyway Sam understands Jack, he can guess his location. Dean is doubtful and *specifically* mentions torching Chicago I think because of the 5x21 reference to his pizza date with Death. I think that is actually a good comparison because cosmic being but one who was a good ally in his own massive cosmic way. It’s a nice omen. Dean is being wrong/right with his sarcasm. It’s complicated :P

The fact he is letting Sam go in there also means he doesn’t think that Jack is in there probably because the shack is still standing. Sam is going to go find clues! But while they’re sitting in the car and Dean’s sending Sam into a shack alone I can’t help but remember 2x21 which was of course where Sam got snatched in a fast food shack and Dean asked for pie and it aaaaall began. I also wonder why Dean punches the sign and that makes me think that something might happen to Sam somehow although I can’t guess how.

-

I have never related to anyone more than Drunk Fries Girl except I’ve done it in reverse, just missing the deadline on hashbrowns in McD’s and stomping out of the store instead of just ordering fries :P

-

Sam deals with the awkwardness of asking for a tall naked guy with a level of composure Dean wouldn’t manage in a million fucking years.

That’s the entire meta.

-

You were right, Sam!

-

Sam’s asking after Jack as the FBI and it’s a way to not have him act as his father on the phone. But the thought occurred to me and I wonder if it passed Sam’s mind or if he’s judged Jack’s age that they’re not terribly far apart - less than 10 years.

I don’t think they’re really playing into this comparison right now anyway - like it was just for the opening scene, or the sheriff would have asked, “are you his father” and put Sam into the awkward position and THEN have him say that he’s an agent.

-

This is literally the best exchange in the entire show because Sam is having to pretend to be FBI while talking about Jack, with Fries Girl and Over Enthusiastic Pirate Guy watching, and his eyes just went to the cheesebutt menu and he saw it and he did not laugh on the phone. 

I think Sam is strong and brave and of pure heart and fuck the “trials” or whatever the fuck shows the measure of a man, he just passed through the fucking abyss and came out the other side because he didn’t laugh at Cheesebutt.

And, look, I laughed at the cheesebutt thing and the way it reflects hiiiilariously on Dean and the burgers thing. We all laughed at it. But Sam just blinked off in short succession a gay accusation and the urge to laugh at cheesebutt like it didn’t even fucking affect him and I am just

I

Dabb

what

-

At the end of 12x23 my only conclusion was “i have been mindfucked”

and I thought

maybe season 13 will be you know… normal

Dabb it has been 15 minutes and I am so fucked up about everything :P

-

And now we cut to Dean with his messed up knuckles. Did he just go punch something off-screen?

(You know, the pirate sign that he punched in the promo for a totally random out of nowhere example of punchable things in the vicinity)

I hope he’s not coping so badly that we’re getting it in angsty flashbacks because that blood was not there before. And angsty flashbacks basically mean Destiel is canon.

OH NO FRIES GIRL IS HERE.

The drunk are an open and friendly people… Is she going to get Dean to open up? She’s literally infodumping her life story on him because she’s been up all night and her feet hurt and no one will give her fries, and I think she’s about to fucking put the moral of the season in Dean’s head somehow I don’t know yet because I have literally paused because I was contemplating removing the dash between me bitching at Dabb for the wonderful fucked up episode and this commentary on it :P

Yep she told him that she punched Becky’s stupid Elsa poster (what is Dabb’s deal with Elsa from Frozen? Does he have a small daughter we don’t know about that inflicted Let It Go on him in a loop? :P) and lit all her stuff on fire and started rambling about just burning the world down in her rage.

And then called Dean sensitive to Sam and this is amazing because her drunk wisdom sees right through his shit. I love fries girl.

-

I LOVE Fries Girl, she wrote “bitch” on the car :D :D :D

was THIS why Baby is all dusty? People are writing rude words all over everything this episode. I mean it’s like a theme. A theme of desecration and burning the world down around you and who gives a flying fuck about consequences - you can change all the menu items to Butt because your mom’s the sheriff and banging the guy who owns the restaurant or whatever, and if your roommate is a bitch, burn down all her things.

I mean then she writes it on the car which is sort of ominous about all their stuff being burned up.

I mean Dean did have that dream about Mary

He’s lost Cas, that’s his world burning down around him.

-

It’s… Look, it’s weird they have put off whatever Dean did in the intervening time Sam was eyeing up the cheesebutt menu to show later because we know we see it later because there’s a hanging “what happened to your knuckles” question and we saw the clip in the promo. It’s a storytelling decision to delay this, and we just see Dean dealing with it by drinking, splashing some alcohol on the cuts, and that’s that for now.

What a fucking mess. Dean. Honey.

I suppose to keep the action flowing we deal with Jack but Dean’s emotional story is running alongside it and it’s being put off, held back… but it’s not being held back forever. It’s going to be opened up to us. But for NOW we just see kinda what Sam and outsiders see - the same thing I was meta-ing about the promo scene, about how they kept us outside the car for that conversation, about how we’re not being allowed into Dean’s grief and not being able to name Cas is another thing, another delay, another inability to confront it, just… we’re outside, we’re watching Dean struggle from afar. From Drunk Fries Girl POV.

-

This episode is fucking magnificent.

-

Maybe Jack is eating Clark, which is the name apparently of the kid.

-

Or are they laughing?? I think I heard laughter?

-

LAUGHTER and the munchies fake out.

I love you Dabb.

This literally says EVERYTHING about Jack and I now trust him completely.

-

Jack’s first part of the story has gone from ominous to what a fucking cutie. He might not actually be a stoner but he’s adorably sort of mascot-y to this guy and it’s just hilarious that he can be like fuck the system I want candy, let’s misuse my powers to get more candy because I love nougat. I mean I was wrong that the world would be saved in 13x23 because of trousers because that was a joke but I am legit thinking that this Human Things redux arc for Jack is going to save us all because fucking nougat. And that’s a serious spec you can hold me accountable for at the end of the season.

The fact they’re sitting on the floor giggling together is just sweet. Jack is learning about friendship so I doubt he would hurt Clark intentionally now, so if Clark does get hurt by Jack it’s going to be a tragedy. Maybe something to show Jack how dangerous his powers are and make him want to be more careful and respectful to human life. I think Clark maaay be in the firing line as an adorable toy that gets mangled because Jack doesn’t know how rough he’s playing >.>

-

Also Jack you should probably not eat so much candy, because you’ll get sick.

-

OH NO JACK. Is angel radio messing with your head?

-

OH NO he hurt the sheriff!

-

OH NO this is how he does the lights blowing walk? IT’s AWFUL. PROTECT MY CANDY LOVING GIANT MAN BABY.

-

SAM TASED HIM

NO

-

I am so upset. I apparently am extremely protective of my Nougat and angel radio hurts him and they’re yelling about him and want to kill him and he’s sensitive too :<

(whatever wizardry Dabb wove with the stoner movie subplot worked.)

-

Sam and Dean are not hailed as heroes for stopping Nougat, they’re arrested to and given the first ever proper search to confiscate all their guns and knives by a cop who knows what the fuck she is doing. Now Dean has to answer for themselves, using his real name and actual job. He’s not got a fuck to give.

-

She asks him if he’s a superhero and some part of Dean just crumbles away inside and he says no. In 9x07 especially there was a strong theme of Dean being a superhero and Thinman also had superhero comparisons to them and it was part of the shine of the job wearing off - one of the more subtly horrible Dean moments in season 9 is that superhero action figure melting on the hob yelling “I clobber evil!” into a horrifying mangled sound. I think I just saw his face convey the exact same symbolic awfulness just in his eyes. Fuck you Jensen.

Note to self: gif that if somehow or other someone else hasn’t yet.

I mean it’s all shattered because the illusion is gone, Dean has nothing left to live for, he’s just a guy doing a job. There’s no meaning, no personal glory, no one to do it FOR. He’s just the tool that gets it done because it has to be done, because what fucking benefit does he get from any of it if the job is also just watching everyone he loves die. That doesn’t make him feel like a superhero that makes him feel like total bleak nihilism where you might as well just be upfront and dead inside and tell the truth because what’s even the point of lying.

This episode has a lot of nihilism but some of it is fun buttburger style and some is killing me inside :P

-

Also Dean had to confirm angels are real, and the look on his face when he does THAT is ALSO AWFUL. Because everything is awful.

All that baggage where confirming angels are real he knows what people think. He knows what HE thought. He knows how what he thought was different from what other people thought about angels (see: the entire conflict between him and Sam in 2x13) and what angels eventually became to him. That one angel WAS watching over him. That there was one who broke the pattern and was … Cas.

Help.

-

I tell you what I thought while I was getting dinner… This is the first time I’ve felt like we’re in a show run by the guy who helped create Plucky’s.

This is the tone. This is the exact right mouthfeel for Dabb era. This is what it SHOULD be.

-

FINALLY the Sam and Jack confrontation we deserve!

Sam is getting through and chatting! Jack is talking about why he was scared which is nice and symbolic about sharing and caring feelings for better communication and understanding!

Sam’s still scared of being in the same room as Jack, flinching when he moves, much like when he’s around Lucifer. He’s legit scared of a thing and Sam is the biggest badass hunter in the world (like, no offence Dean, you have an impressive and showy history but in terms of brute strength and raw badass mofo power it’s Sam :P He’s Sam Fucking Winchester and you have a much more personal, over-dramatic flair to the big kills and such)

Jack moves forward intently because he doesn’t know that this much eagerness is a trait stamped out of adults, and sits cross-legged, childish, but still imposing. He’s learned cross-legged is a fun way to sit and I’m really liking the choices here to make him both naive and powerful.

-

He’s fucking sitting with the Mr Burns hands i knew it i knew this was going to be a trait of his, I called it from like 2 promo pics. God damn I’m good at reading body language from just a few stills :P He’s exactly what I was expecting but in full 3D animation.

It’s just… a cute weird trait. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands so he just rests them where they are and lets them hang, because he doesn’t have any tics or mannerisms. He’s mannerismless. He’s so new he hasn’t got the faintest trace of social anxiety. This is a raw, undamaged soul.

I am going to weep when Nougat gets hurt in the bits that make him so sweet.

-

See now he’s apologising for hurting people.  He sounds so confused when he says “I’m sorry” like he’s sounding out the concept but the great thing is he’s learning 1000 miles an hour. Anna told Cas he doesn’t know what it is to be sorry and Cas still struggled with it in season 7 in the “playing sorry” game and only in 9x11 expressed that he truly understood empathy and human emotion now. Jack tries on an emotion for size, discovers it, and now seems to be fairly earnest about it.

-

Sam: *blink blink*

Sam was RIGHT. <3

-

Hahahah he says Kelly is a part of him. Another point for me! That was one of my specs for how he got to learn English and concepts so fast - that the reason it’s fatal to birth him is because he’s going to not just absorb the basic baby stuff like nutrients and stuff but he’s going to suck her dry of facts and concepts and that’s what destroys her. It’s like what Amara did but far more complex.

Damn, I’m sorry you had to die for this Kelly, this is a pretty terrible idea in some ways. I better not overthink it.

He just said that his powers are him but not him - he sees them as something other from himself. The whole deal that he needed to be born powers and all, that taking the grace was taking a part of him - yeah. The Cas argument about his grace too, that it can be removed from him and he’ll still be Cas, the grace is just power… If Jack sees it as a separate part of himself, a “Not Me” part of himself… That’s a huge thing.

-

Oh my fucking GOD He thinks Cas is his FATHER OH NO OH NO OH NO OOOH NOOO.

(Also thanks a LOT people reading along with me for not telling me. Look, the analysis about Sam thinking it was Lucifer and Dabb’s BIG Nougat Fake Out build up were all like… how it was meant to be read :P I guess that’s why they backed off the father thing for Sam immediately after using it in the one place it would hurt the most.)

I mean Cas did basically act as the co-parent with Kelly and I am pretty sure our Nougat has some lines crossed here and OH MY GOSH DABB YOU MAGNIFICENT FUCKER

See when I said they were making Jack look SUPER FUCKING CREEPY when he was naked at the drive in obviously that was a fake out because I knew he was gonna be hunting with them later but oh my fucking fuck de fuck I want to go back and watch Jack’s bits all over again where he’s wandering around naked (as Cas is wont to do) asking for his father because FUCK.

He’s born as Cas and Kelly die and now he’s wandering around asking for Cas and that whole opening, that whole build up where he seems sinister… He remembered Cas all along… Oh gosh I said some things about him back there… I should go back to that scene immediately.

…

I nearly cracked a fucking joke that Jack doesn’t have a last name just like Cas and it turns out that scene was a joke about Jack not having a last name because Cas is his father and HE doesn’t have a fucking last name.

I hate everything.

“I’m trying to find him. I have to find him” YEAH SO JACK IS ON THE “WHERE IS CAS” TEAM AND THERE’S ANGELS SAYING CAS DESERVED BETTER, I THINK DABB HAS BEEN READING THE BLOGS AGAIN. 

Jack picked Cas to be there to be his parent and guide when Cas said that thing about being his guardian to show him the righteous path and Jack heard it from the womb and was like YES I CHOOSE YOU PIKACHU and that was that, Cas was his father now. Found family in the extreme. Who is the best family, the good family? I’ll have that one please.

Oh gosh and now it’s sadder that the sheriff was asking for a phone number or address because Cas HAS those. He has a HOME.

…

Anyway back to the Sam and Jack scene, which I already watched through but I want to watch AGAIN DAMMIT.

Gosh this is magnificent though because it puts Cas so squarely in the middle of everything - even though he’s dead he’s Jack’s focus and he’s Jack’s moral centre and everything that is good about Cas is what Jack wants to beeeeeee and oh my gosh is he going to choose the Winchesters to be his new guardians because they were Cas’s family? HELP ME.

-

I’m still kinda not over Jack completely becoming Kelly in the womb and being born by sucking her goodness out from the inside.

What a godawful parenting metaphor/commentary on the mother’s sacrifice.

-

Oh and the door to the other world thing as the lead in to talking about his father? I was so sure it was going to be about Lucifer and then -

oh god I am in pain.

Because he diverts from talking about the portal to talking about needing to find his father to protect him and I was like A: well you need the portal for that and B: nooo, Nougat, you don’t need that fucker in your life! and then -

oh.

Ow.

-

Anyway Sam’s face while talking about Cas is just… ARGH. And Jack’s so earnest and happy about Cas protecting him and how he had to grow up

-

And then poor Nougat’s face when Sam tells him Cas is dead and he’s SO ANGRY. And THAT, my dear Nougat, is how you get to the lovely position of being furiously vengeful against your birth father in order to avenge your chosen father and I am delighted.

Cas is Jack’s Bobby.

-

OH NO Clark has gone out to smoke with headphones. He’s so gonna get angel murdered if Jack’s not gonna kill him (because he is a soft squishy nougat person) and then Jack’s going to be even more hurt.

STOP HURTING JACK.

-

FRIES GIRL IS AN ANGEL.

-

THAT’S NOT A GOOD THING.

-

SAM, TELL DEAN ABOUT THE CAS’S SON THING.

HE SAID LUCIFER’S SON, THAT’S NOT HELPFUL.

I suppose Sam doesn’t want to convey that to Dean because he knows how Dean is with concepts he hates because he’s currently flippantly talking about killing “Damien” out back rather than engage with the subject matter, but tbh I think bringing up Cas would be such a knock to the feels that Sam might be able to get in the line that “this kid seems to have a Cas-guided morality” while Dean is still emotionally picking himself up.

-

AHAHAHA Dean said “that won’t do jack against her” - he’s still using “jack” as a phrase

-

Dean’s Becky… what a surprise :P Maybe Fries Angel writing “Bitch” on the car wasn’t subtle enough.

The angels find Dean an annoying roommate whose drama they’re always having to deal with.

Mittens just reminded me I wept about 9x07 to her and the poor melting action figure and how the angels want to burn Dean down. I am not okaaaay.

-

OOOH we’re getting angel radio now because Jack’s our in!

I don’t think their eyes normally light up to communicate with it but new season new rules and this must be a mechanic we’re dealing with more than just this one example.

Poor Clark - Jack briefly had a friend, learned to sit cross legged and eat nougat from him, and now his friend who made him laugh is dead. It’s a HARD LIFE being a Winchester.

-

Also the main Winchesters are getting smashed up

Wait Dean just got back up with STYLE. Nice fight

-

Hey Clark is still alive-ish… Maybe Jack can heal him.

-

OH NO BANISHING HURTS NOUGAT TOO.

That was some great quick thinking by Sam.

Guess walls affect it or Fries Angel was too far away.

-

Fries Angel needed to stick around to deliver some Destiel exposition that she knows Dean’s first thought to “Jack can do anything” was not “I will use him to reopen that portal and get mom back” but “I will get him to resurrect my dead angel” and just immediately goes from that to crushing Dean about Cas’s death

“Castiel, he’s dead. All the way dead. Because of you.”

That is.. the worst line

-

“Or what, Other One?” Jeeeze the angels really do have more of a beef with Dean about the whole Winchesters thing for some reason. That really means in a couple of lines of exposition that every time heaven has mocked Cas about The Winchesters they really have meant Dean… Just, you know.. remember who wrote the eeny meeny miney mo scene for a sec, back when he had to be subtle about Dean calling Cas but that just being a random happenstance to what the angels were talking about, essentially :P

-

Oh no she stabbed Nougat!

I assume he doesn’t die because… you know.. spoilers.

-

He’s got his own Cas-like pull the blade out moment, but… Wow.

-

HOLY SHIT SOMEONE SAID THE LINE “I’M FINE” ON THIS SHOW AND MEANT IT

IT IS A NEW ERA

NOUGAT IS THE HERALD OF BETTER TIMES

-

Poor guy is stunned and confused and a little hurt though.

-

Oh no Clark is fine but going to hospital. I mean I assume this means doctors will help him. His mom is telling him he’ll be brave and so on.

-

Poor Nougat is so sad about how horrible this world is. Cas isn’t here to protect him and Sam and Dean just did a moderately adequate job at fending off the angels while getting the shit kicked out of them because angels are scary and powerful again.

-

Sam tries to bring up the keeping Jack thing again and Dean’s like yeah we can keep him but he’s evil so I guess that means you clean up the mess a la taking a puppy home? 

Dean’s still convinced Jack is evil and brainwashed Kelly and Cas - it’s kinda more terrifying that he BECAME Kelly and absorbed her, and I do think he chose Cas to be his father and none of it was malicious, and they gave him the love and promise of protection he needs to be good and all and it’s a billion times more nuanced than Dean thinks… He’s being protective of Cas, depressed about their life and their chances… I think he’s going to be pretty wrong about Nougat because from 12x19 it was obvious he had chosen Cas BECAUSE Cas was good and would protect him. Even when he didn’t think he could do it himself. So I think Jack, uh… motivated Cas… because he wanted him… Like, I still think Jack did shit to Cas because he did creepy shit to Kelly which we’re apparently going to move on from because he is an adorable squishy guy who I want to follow with a blanket and a stick to beat off people who will wear him down. But yeah, 12x19 is super weird and I don’t *like* the method Jack acquired his mom and dad, even if I do think that he’s not evil and the end result seems extremely positive if he popped out the womb determined to find Cas, and has a Cas-centric morality. Loving Cas is obviously the good and best thing you can do on this show and it’s vindicating in spades he’s a nice guy because he loves Cas and considers him a father for the protection he offered.

(Still think if he was pure good to start with he’d have SAID “hey I plan to be born a full grown adult, you don’t need these diapers” but that WAS what caused him to open the rift so maybe his attempt to warn Cas went astray… :P)

But yeah I still find Jack “choosing” Cas to be his father and to create that bond out of nothing, almost instantaneously, to be a little suspect in the happenstance of it, even if as I’ve been saying all along I have been completely open to him turning out to be, well… Nougat.

-

But Dean doesn’t care, he wants to kill Jack. “At least the only people he can hurt there are you and me” WOW DEAN.

WWWWOOOOOOW.

-

OH NO OH NO OOOOH NOOOOOOOOO O OoOOOOooooOOOooo o Sam is saying “are you sure about this Dean? It’s Cas” - I assume in reference to burning him rather than burying him and Dean’s gonna be like, Fries Angel said he was dead as dead. 

I don’t wanna see it.

“You don’t think I’ve tried that” OH NO

Here’s the flashback! Told you it was coming! (You have all seen this episode no one is mad enough to wait 18 hours just to watch for the first time with my notes) But yeah as I was saying, sidelining Dean’s emo stuff to focus on the action, to set it aside, to put us away from it, to keep it back for when it would hit most. To do some god damn STORYTELLING around here. Some fucking ardfgjhlsksdfhjklslhfdjqp storytelling. That when all the action is done, when Dean has been ground down into a fucking paste by this day, the day of having to come to terms with the loss of Cas, when we know he went off to have some private punching things time and Sam was being the least gay to possibly gay in the comic stoner movie side of the story, Dean was having a moment SO POWERFUL that it could ONLY be conveyed to us by not showing it happening until we were deeply, truly, in the context of Dean mourning Cas and where we could focus on that with nothing left to distract us that this is the Worst.

-

…. I have been sitting here not pressing play for over 10 minutes

-

OH NO

I have paused it immediately

because they used the camera angle from Baby

the Roadhouse one

and the one from the fight where Cas was on the phone

-

so uh

Add hysterical weeping to the things this show makes me do because I was one stoic snarky hahaha isn’t this ridiculous Jack planned to adult all along so the diapers thing was a massive prank kinda person and then bam Dean went out back to pray and I was scream-crying and then he said Cas was his everything and I am never going to be chill again

-

> Okay, Chuck… or god, or whatever. I need your help. See, you– you left us. You LEFT us. You went off. You said… You said the earth would be fine because it had me… and Sam, but it’s NOT, and we’re NOT.
> 
> We’ve lost everything. And now you’re gonna bring him back. Okay? You’re gonna bring back Cas, you’re gonna bring back Mom, you’re gonna bring ‘em all back. All of ‘em. Even Crowley.
> 
> ’Cause after everything that you’ve done, you OWE us, you son of a bitch. So you get your ass down here and you make this right, right here and right now.
> 
> Please. Please help us.

-

Thanks Mittens.

So.

Uh.

-

First name basis with the guy upstairs: this is a personal appeal in case he ever actually cared. (Spoiler alert: I don’t think Dean is going to come out of this with a better opinion of God)

*I* need your help. Not we, *I*. This is on Dean’s behalf for Cas.

He brings up the line which we went into Dabb era on and I ripped to shreds critically at the time that Chuck ever put that burden onto Dean because he has some broad ass shoulders but they are not big enough for the world and his whole problem is he’s always been carrying it in the first place so Chuck didn’t do SHIT to make him feel better AND NOW DEAN IS CRITIQUING THE CARETAKERS OF THE EARTH IDEA. THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE HIS BURDEN. MAYBE NOT BECAUSE HE CAN’T DO IT BUT BECAUSE HE SHOULD NOT BE EXPECTED TO DO IT. He was singled out as the firewall between light and dark but he doesn’t feel like a superhero. He doesn’t clobber evil. He’s being STRIPPED DOWN AS A PERSON. WHO EVEN IS HE. WILL DEAN QUIT HUNTING? JESUS CHRIST, I SAID THAT LINE IN 11x23 WAS AWFUL FOR DEAN BUT I DIDN’T THINK DABB WAS GONNA GO *THERE*

And he says the world isn’t fine - and they’re not. Their emotional state reflects the world. The centre of the universe thing, in the storytelling, makes the world reflect Dean. His misery or happiness is on a cosmic scale. This tangledupness of him in the middle of it all is killing him because the world will be in danger and that can’t all land on him. He can’t be the Atlas of this world. But he is. OH how he is. But this isn’t a world with superheroes. Just HUMAN GUYS DOING THEIR JOB.

And then the transition. The terms and conditions. The “you have given me a fucked up burden so pls unfuck it and here’s how” swinging around from “everything” to “him”. The implicitness of it all. The… The fact everyone knows it’s about Cas. It’s not about Mom. It’s not about Crowley. He can say their names. He couldn’t say that Cas was dead. Fries Angel immediately identified it. Cas is the answer to all the questions, where all roads lead. And they’ve come back to the house where he died, FOR Cas, and Sam asks about praying and Dean has already asked and got no answer, already been told Cas is permadead, and THIS is where we deliver the bombshell. Everything flows into “him”.

Cas is Dean’s everything.

And yeah he wants Mary back and fuck it fuck you God fuck everything just fucking include Crowley to because why the fuck not, you owe me. All that pointless stupid death and loss, it’s enough to make me feel bad that Crowley is gone.

And oh the wank over the summer he would ask for Crowley back too (and I smacked the desk and hooted with laughter, with tears still in my eyes, reeling from the “everything” line because I called the way Dean would ask for him back. I knew it!), it just… Even Mary doesn’t compare because she’s tacked on in the repetition, the clarification that everything is him is Cas. And it’s totally fine for Dean to ask for these others he’s lost back, for them to be in the same sentence as Cas, because yes he lost them and it hurts and it’s awful, but there is a very special awful reserved for Cas. The kind of awful where Sam has to pause and ask Dean if he’s sure, if he doesn’t want to find a way to bring him back. And we ALL know we’re not supposed to bring people back because there’s consequences. We’re all adults in the room, they both have done it, seen and FELT the consequences for having it done TO them. But Sam knows. He just knows what happens when it’s someone like Cas. And maybe we don’t have any more bullshit, we just ask politely and carefully if this is going to be a “bring them back at any cost” situation, and how can I help?

And then at the end of the prayer Dean cracks out the exact look and angle of expression for his Plea To God face that he has used… once. In 5x14. When utterly at the end of his rope. This is what losing Cas has brought him to - the lowest point, the one back in season 5 that was a danger to the guardianship of the world lumped on Dean’s shoulders, because it was where he was when he nearly said yes to Michael, the despair cycle he couldn’t deny any more at the time… Yeah, this has kind of seen and waved at season 7 on the way to hurtling all the way back to the Worst Dean Has Ever Felt To Date.

-

Nice.

-

And Dean has given up all faith in God ever helping them or caring about them.

-

OH NO

NOUGAT

Sam has taken him to see his dead mom. :(

Time to grapple with the concept of loss.

*beeps her big toe*

Oh Nougat I truly feel bad for you now. Look at his big soft face. He consumed her to gain his life and powers and his intelligence and his GOODNESS and oh no that means he’s gonna feel baaad about it.

-

But Dean is downstairs with Cas, alone. Can this episode get any fucking worse.

-

THOSE SERIES OF ACTIONS QUALIFY AS WORSE I AM WEEPING AGAIN.

Oh god Dean.

You should have told him.

You should have fucking told him.

-

Oh Nougat you… sweetie. He has no clue what to say. :(

Sam tells him to say thank you, because he devoured Kelly, and to say sorry.

-

Oh Sam, he’s crying for Cas as well.

-

OH NO Dean’s so defeated about Mary it’s just… UGH.

I assume these are the first things he says today where he gets immediately proven wrong - I assume the last scene will be a hop across the universe lines.

“They’re all gone”

This is simultaneously the best Sam stuff in 1000 miles of canon and the worst Dean episode ever and I am in agony.

-

Yep that billisecond of footage was completely right. Sam is sad, Jack, who we didn’t see, is struggling sweetly with the concept of death and what it means and how to act and feel right now, and Dean… has checked the fuck out.

-

RUN, MARY

-

I LOVE HER.

-

FUCK YOU LUCIFER BTW

-

Ugh her face is like mine when he says he needs her. The shot looks like the fucking Titanic poster. I’m assuming they do not get very far before Michael gets involved, though.

I’m gonna go back to ugly-crying about the rest of this.

-

This is Dabb’s best solo episode hands down. I laughed, I cried, I struggled with the complex philosophy of being human and if you should consume your mother from the inside out in order to be born as a full-grown man.

I think I’m keeping Nougat.


	2. 13x02

i’m on a train. choo choo.

expectations: helpfully wrote them out last time for the season as a whole which this ep is introducing all the plot stuff for since last episode advanced the plot a single day of angst, but this episode especially has a few SUPER low bars to pass. Last time out BL failed spectacularly to not kill Eileen. now we have “don’t assault mary, over-sexualise the day old guy, or flub introing the new characters, or reintroducing the returning ones”

-

our train was like 10 minutes late out the station because there was no driver. is this a metaphor.

-

i also had to eat krispy kreme doughnuts before I could dig into the episode.

-

oh jeeze Drexel survived season 12… no one really has a fanclub for the random minions, probably because around Simmons we realised there was no point getting attached. and he was in some of the worst scenes of last season just because of the context. which is a shame. also he’s a lucifer fan and that’s not really a worthwhile position. anyway hope springs eternal that colonel sanders is such a charismatic character he makes the demon scenes worth watching… and Drexel gets to be interesting. And stop saying lines like ‘make hell great again’ which is so not a good thing to put in his mouth - at least the other demons who were going around saying it it was the white demon who said it and got the stink eye from the other demon.

One of the other demons says “can you even hear yourself” but idk if BL would crit their own writing unlike competent writers whose first port of call is stressing that they are bad writers and mock their corny dialogue

-

this also raises the semi perpetual question since season 11 that if Crowley’s throne room is here why would any of the pretenders to the throne even want it. they seriously need to justify it. We know devil’s gates are a pain and not usually open so smuggling minions out to work topside is an issue but there are other workarounds than establishing a campy hell set that’s not even in hell, then getting confused about if it’s hell or not, and never really explaining why Lucifer would stick around in it except for the fact Crowley is really good at setting up a system and it would be a shame not to use the pre-established set up.

but eh

I really sincerely hope Asmodeus is just here because Crowley’s ex-minions are here and will relocate post-haste to his plantation.

-

He hung up his coat. Drexel survived though. I guess being a named character has its perks. the sun shone in my eyes the entire time so i was quite amused when the train turned a bit and i saw demons dropping with burned out eyes, angel-style. like Dagon being super duper powerful, I guess they’re giving him extra powers - because this is just a few steps up from how Sam was exploding demons with his head at one point and he got his powers from a YED… though in 5x10 when Lucifer killed all those demons he also didn’t burn the eyes out. it’s probs a stylistic choice. in character and out.

-

Nougat!!! he’s so cute. he’s sleeping at an angle to be behind Sam in the convo. The camera points at Sam from the dash and at Dean from Sam’s POV, and Jack is in his background. methinks this is about Sam.

He’s trying to make Dean sleep and calling out how he hasn’t had any, which is nice because I was worried about that earlier.

Dean is calling Jack “it” which I think was in some people’s pre-season fic, or else if it weren’t it was in the one i didn’t write :P Blatant convo is blatant but does at least have an actual honest to god lead into the next scene via the mom is dead conversation. Again we get the super zoom close up on sam being sad and questioning dean’s thoughts. assert yourself, sammy! i believe in u

-

(totally on your side too Dean but the sun is too bright to examine your micro expressions and the camera isn’t favouring you anywho so you’re a rewatch flavour today)

-

Satan wants to trade Mary for Jack. Well if Dean knew he’d sell Jack for a corn chip anyway (is that Crowley’s phrase from the original weird dog episode?) so that’s just a great big victory. methinks the choice will fall on Sam or fall on Dean after he’s had a chance to bond with Jack some more - that’s the other side to the tension about Dean liking jack that i was talking about earlier whensomeone asked me why everyone wants dean to adopt jack.

ideally mary saves herself or it never comes to it but for now i’ll assume whatever else happens between here and there, some version of this plan will at least be floated, even if it’s random circumstances and not lucifer’s hand any more or something

makes sense anyway to tie mary back into the main arc in a way like how she mirrored cas the entire time last season - if her fate and jack’s are connected even tenuously it gives her a connect back into the main thing

-

oh good the woman next to me has finished her dangerously over-full cup of Pimms because I was terrified it would be bye bye laptop

nnnoooo as I type she refilled it

the train is swaying back and forth so much

-

anyway Mary asks Lucifer why he wants to be a parent and he hints several times in a row that he has hidden depths without actually showing any of them. i don’t want him to have a redemption anyway and i really super duper don’t want him to have one written entirely by BL

-

Colonel Sanders continues to try and liven up the story while giving us surface level exposition

I’ll be honest, 'write that down’ is the first good line… must be whichever of BL is quippy currently writing. I think they just introduced a monster taht lucifer is scared of but I couldn’t catch what it was and for some reason another demon is listening in so is he getting ideas? I mean why to what end? also what exactly was the thing that was locked up because it sounded like a cut price Leviathan expo dump but obvs not that because a leviathan would eat Lucifer

i mean i don’t think we pay enough attention to the fact that dick roman would just gobble lucifer up and end of story. bring back dick.

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*Pimms lady sways dangerously close to my laptop*

I think Sam accused Dean of hallucinating “shit” on the road because it’s too noisy to hear him say “sheep”. I just assume that is what he actually said in the non-censored version

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pls drink your Pimms fast enough to end this danger but not so fast you’re sloshed and throw it on my laptop before it’s all gone

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Cashing in on that new Scooby Doo partnership! Some bank like Halifax is currently using Scooby Doo to sell stuff so I see that dog on telly all the time and the fact they exist in the same fictional universe as Sam and Dean is kiiiilling me. I think we have all been assuming Jack takes us to Scooby World so plonking him in front of the telly to watch some is how it all begins. Dean, like every fan fic between 13x01 and now hates Jack unreservedly for having childlike enthusiasm about the telly because Cas used to do that, while (semi)unaware that Jack is mirroring HIMSELF from 12x11 most closely right now. I think that’s an interesting parallel I don’t know how much work has gone into but pls poke me to write about Jack’s 1 day old child-like wonder compared to sweetie pie no memory Dean if no one else has done it because they’re essentially the same character from completely different angles, and we’re about to hit Jack mirroring Dean excessively.

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Me: don’t excessively sexualise the kid

BL: “here read a book” *chucks the Bible at him* *he opens it to the Song of Solomon* We’re NOT having this chat right now.

I suppose some people just meta-gasmed all over this. I don’t know much about the Bible but I do know that’s the sexy bit.

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the “I can take the couch” conversation probably put the exact same thought process in Jack’s head as mine when my very lanky brother looked at the lil brick hard bed set up in the corner of our hotel while we were stranded in Glasgow, and looked at me, princess and the pea-syndrome sufferer, and nobly offered to take a bed that *my* feet stuck 3 inches over.

No.

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Thanks but no.

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aw man we’re only at Carlisle.

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It’s the promo scene as well, which mostly just drove home how much Jack is mirroring Dean… We’ve had basically no character interaction in the missing day, although we can assume it’s mostly gone like this… Dean annoyed, Sam forgiving Jack for being adorable, and Jack being adorable. He’s getting better at sarcasm as well, which can’t be making Dean feel any better about him.

And that means that the “Castiel is my father” revelation happened off-screen and we’re not being given any room for a reaction about it, which is the most annoying part of this. I knew 13x01 was an anomaly and going into a BL ep so soon after would deprive us of some of the emotional depth, but it’s like having a bucket of cold water dumped on us :P

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I think Dean’s 'sometimes’ about family being good is going to be a criminally underrated line and I don’t even know if I can bring myself to remember it all the time in discussions about how Dean feels about family going forwards but this is a note that i heard him say it and acknowledged it means he has some issues with blood family ongoing.

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Jack being adorably human blah blah, Dean aggravates the issue by being really mean about insisting Lucifer is his father and asking if he reached out to Jack and now Jack’s remembering him doing that. Hey leave the kid alone, Dean, his blank slate was slightly messed up by waning to be like Cas which is obviously an excellent exemption to  having a blank slate.

Maybe there’s a metaphor in him agitating the bad father sitation over here.

I don’t know if Jack should have asked for clarification there so let’s pretend there was a hesitation and a “Ca -” “*Lucifer.* Your father.” exchange. Or something.

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And now Nougat is lying about emotional strife, like’s been agitated into being a Winchester from his great blank slate

GAH Stop gesturing by the STILL FULL glass of Pimms

they keep topping it up and it’s not good for my stress levels

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I think I just missed basically everything that happened because all I could see was my own reflection but then they were like *rising tension music* *scuffle* *donatello* so I assume he jumped out on them. Mental note to go back and see who was defensive of Jack and what he did.

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*casually mopping up my neighbour’s Pimms as it splashes dangerously close to my laptop while listening to Donatello’s exposition*

the good thing about BL episodes is that you can often just kinda chill and  listen to the exposition if it’s just a chunk o dialogue and nothing offensive is going on so we’re making progress through the ep

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*dean is super bitter about who does and doesn’t have a direct line to god for some reason*

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Awww Sam says they’re brothers and it’s a family crest when he is saying Jack should get the tattoo <3

*completely* robbed of Dean’s reaction

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WHY DID THEY NOT TELL JACK IT WOULD HURT

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I went to the loo and came back to them wiping Pimms off their phone

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Well Jack just completely put Dean in his place RE: pain, when he told him to man up about it and Jack was like right we accept pain as a sign of maturity… this is absolutely not what Dean meant but it is probably a healthier approach to it minus all the toxic masculinity

can we get to 13x03 and an ep written by Berens soon :P

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Jack accidentally absorbs his warding. Oops. I guess that angel warding was a WEE bit OTT I mean I’m no expert but that looks like a total pain to be dealing with all the time for the makeup department :P

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Also must have taken friggin ages

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I still don’t get why Donnatello is here except to use as a chip in their arguments… Ah well. Dean arguing intent doesn’t matter freaky powers are freaky powers because he’s still pissed about what happened to Cas and can’t see the much more basic thing that Jack didn’t mean to get Cas killed and OBVIOUSLY didn’t intend it if he was waiting for Cas to be there for him when he popped out of the womb. I think for all the random avenues this took in fandom this is probably about as deep as the show will go if this is how BL are spelling it all out for us… And the answer is all there on the page already but we’re just using Dean as the alternate side of the argument to show his own character stuff going on where he can’t deal with Jack because he’s upset about Cas. And he was always more concerned about Cas than the philosophy of whatever else was going on

-

Train going through the Lake District… I am enchanted. It’s a grey day w/ very low clouds and water on the ground and all the trees are autumnal. Sue me, this is more interesting than Donatello being unhelpful. He backed up Sam’s argument earlier w/ saying Lucifer felt toxic and Jack is somewhat more like his grandfather, but then once he starts talking he’s like hurr blurr as a scientist nature wins and he’s a monster and then Sam’s like I thought you were on my side dude and then Dean angsts about Cas some more and calls Jack the devil and he decides he better start teleporting now because leave me alone not-dad and get off my case

I hope we see his wings. Dean asks in 13x01 if he had wings and equated it to teleporting and I suppose we don’t know how demons do it but the assumption is if he’s half-angel adn can teleport then he has wings

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Oh no it is KILLING me how Jack’s thing is sitting cross legged. PROTECT HIM.

Sam finds him, thankfully, after the Sad Kelly Montage. There’s a very Northern man behind me talking loudly on the phone so I’m gonna concentrate SUPER HARD now

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The hotel is called the Black Hat which I think is western coding for the bad guy. There was a house in the prairie art on the wall, and the single isolated house is how Jack came into the world… He’s dealing with towns now.

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Exposition Mooose! Telling us Dean gets some wires crossed about getting angry whe nhe’s frustrated and scared  like yes good expose dean for us some more… explaining him to jack is like hey so um he’s an acquired taste… trying to make this about protecting everyone instead of pointing out the obvious that he blames jack for what happened to cas

Jack is a winchester because he’s like maybe i’m not worth it

help

and them Sam brings up w/o knowing it was on jack’s mind that kelly thought so but also is a blatant link to how they used dead!mary to guide their lives right up until she came back…

… and then so would Cas and so would I. Sam aligning himself with Jack’s parents to show he has emotional guardianship of him right now

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has dean gone down to the bar because it’s called th eblack spur and obvs not the same one but i’m like 100% sure that’s the bar from 10x01 where he was hanging with Crowley and I’m not gonna fact check that. it’s “black” again aka more nature stuff, more coded evil stuff I guess? I don’t know anything about Westerns I admit

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And hey look a blonde bartender is chatting to him - there’s a Jack ale sign on one side… and hahahahahaaaa no there’s a Kingdom Beer sign behind Dean over his shoulder because the director wants to kill me

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So far this is the weirdest BL episode Ive seen in a long time because they’re trying so so hard to be all nuanced and deep and to explore character stuff and carry on the mood from the first episode, while being direly under-equipped to handle it, so everyone’s just blurting exposition all over the place in a series of awkward exchanges. The overtness of the dialogue is actually helping in a weird way to rush through the tick boxes because Dean just admitted to seeking his neglectful father’s approval from a standing start which is a sign of progress for him to just leap right into admitting his issues with John. I don’t have a frame of reference for this because tired and white noise and noting we’re pulling into Lancaster and it looks like rain now and there’s a guy travelling with an enormous silver mirror with an ornate frame as tall as he is on the other platform and more pimms is on the table… but yeah when DID he last talk about John? Is this the increased openness since 12x22 we were hoping for? Is my backpack okay because it’s in a luggage rack I can’t see and if someone nicks it they’re only stealing all my laundry but I like some of those t-shirts so it would be a bummer…

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Lol surprise Asmodeus, no wonder she pushed all the father stuff… Was he talking about Lucifer then? It’s everyone has father issues season. He’s fitting in as another mirror in it all. Like the great big shiny mirror the dude at Lancaster station had. I’d honestly not be surprised if John came back in some way just cuz we had the Mary season where motherhood was a theme, and now we’re doing this. I don’t think John would come back for good liek Mary but they could scrounge up a more direct way of confronting his memory at least.

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This also is so unsubtle bcos Dean had no idea what the bartender looked like so he coulda just tended the bar and chatted to Dean b4 he knew who Asmodues was, and we could have had some cool tension like we all know that Colonel Sanders is the bad guy and Dean’s just chatting him up a bit. But then when do we ever get such things in a BL ep?

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Sam just goes and spells it out about Jack being molded and the ambiguity of his father figures aka the dual nature battle they think Jack should have, with a deciding vote already thrown in there by Kelly and of course that Jack has free will and choice

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So Mary just nearly got assaulted, tho not by Lucifer, which was not exactly a pleasant surprise. >.> idk what that guy’s problem was but he seems to be implying women can’t fight and something something I didn’t catch but clearly he doesn’t see a whole bunch of women. This is literally the antithesis of the show’s handling of female hunters since the start so I’m going to have to assume that this is an AU thing like, total worst timeline, and everyone’s sexist to boot. Not really a fan of doing this at all because why are humans made out to be just as bad as meeting angels and demons in this world - Mary being at risk from ALL of them (where is BOBBY I wanna see wtf was going on between him and AU mary and our mary and our bobby) - and it being disappointing that Mary’s at risk BECAUSE she’s female and might get assaulted.

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Lucifer continues to try and act like a good guy by saving Mary and then of course the Nice Guy twist that always comes - if you won’t give me what I want that I’m pretending is mutually beneficial then I will just hurt you.

They’re chilling by that church from 8x23 now so I guess Mikey will be along soon.

Preston Station looks like a hellscape as well - it’s packed and there’s no ticket barriers. I’m so glad we were only passing through

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Dean comes in and sits down with Sam with the shadows of the blinds falling over them - prison imagery I missed you! We’re trapped in these mindsets…

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Sam wants to get them on the same page and Dean is like F U and Sam’s like lemme do exposition while you sit with the shadow over your eyes.

I wish there was a shadow falling over my eyes… We’ve passed back through to hazy sunlight south of Preston.

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Sam says people who we love, and who have been in our lives for a long time, in such a way I bet some asshole is excluding Cas from one category bcos Mary doesn’t count in the long time category so maybe one is for her and one is for Cas

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obviously that’s the real donatello because he only cares about breakfast and is an object of ridicule while Asmodeus was presumably the other and actually talking plot.

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this is an idiot ball moment tbh because Jack hasn’t been in any hotel scenes for a while and somehow we’ve shuffled through all the characters here and not had any of them with Jack or checking where he is despite him being the most precious cargo, and it was bugging me earlier that dontatello and sam talking meant jack was alone because he wouldn’t be w/ dean so where was he but Sam didn’t ask? they just chatted? And obvs that was asmodeus but yeah… no one’s keeping an eye on him and D. wasn’t even supposed to be taking Jack to get breakfast or what? If that wasn’t him then what exactly did Sam think Jack was up to?

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Also Sam tanking the mytharc Dean tanking the personal arc - he talks to both of them w/o them knowing and guess what each’s conversation is

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And also Dean came in with food as well like there’s major miscommunication going on here if the real donatello was getting breakfst and so was Dean but is that the point or is that just a plothole where this doesn’t add up properly if you actually try and map who knew what and - was Dean the one SUPPOSED to be watching Jack? But Sam didn’t ask him either.

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Anyway here’s the demon that Dean’s entire fight scene is about straddling to death.

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I also loved his march down to the room where he was all in shadows

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The last shot of that fight though where Dean’s cowering away from the demon on a bed while it advances on him with a knife

like wow that was a good fight scene for the dynamics going on there. Dean as a victim being absolutely dominated by that demon and all the associated knife and weirdass positions imagery. Dean on that table with his legs around the demon is like an entire meta on its own as well

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okay it was too bright when I saw the scene where Asmodeus was talking about that whatever it was he let out but I THINK that was the same demon I thought I saw overhearing it and now I am wondering what on earth that was about because Dean just killed him :P

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Awww Jack out in nature. I love the flowers and the buzz of insects and life all around him. And Asmodeus is testing him.

Okay it’s been like one episode how can he have character inconsistency with himself from earlier in the episode - he now wants to unleash the things he got in trouble for unleashing before? I mean unless he’s decided that Lucifer really isn’t coming back so might as well just throw a party while there’s no adult supervision, and get back to all that chaos and destruction he loves. If he thought there was remotely a chance Lucifer would come back he wouldn’t do it, but then is he just doing it now out of spite that Lucifer told him no before, and instead of whatever nonsense he said about family dynamics back then is not really true at all because he wants to rebel now instead.

If Jack unleashes the thing because he was tricked then it will be the biggest Sam and Cas mirror thing ever and will set him up with some angst and guilt for the rest of the season.

One of the downsides of Dean not getting along with him is that Jack doesn’t know how much scepticism about God is a healthy amount in this universe. He basically just knows that God is his grandfather and family is usually good. But God is suuuch a bad concept to rally behind here, it’s not even like God wouldn’t ask him to do it because God never tells anyone what to do about anything (which is like the first thing Dean would have told Jack if he hadn’t still been sulking God wouldn’t lift a finger to help him over the whole dead Cas issue), God would also just never have any positive reinforcement for anyone or get excited about having a grandson, at least in a way to get actively involved :P

I mean Chuck probs thought that Donatello making his way to Jack was about as useful as he could be and that immediately went sour when no one kept 2 pairs of eyes on each other at all times.

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Wyoming has some pretty nasty stuff under it :P

I wonder if Hell maps exactly to earth but just kinda deeper.

Also point to me for rambling about hell gates earlier and then Asmodeus actually listening to my suggestion box for once. Maybe he will be the one character who can actually hear me in this show.

Hey you, you’re an asshole

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Is Lucifer aware he literally just lead them in a circle because I am so not telling him that, because it’s too funny.

I hope Jack didn’t inherit his sense of direction but this is Dabb era, as soon as that kid gets a car, trouble starts.

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The midlands are so bleak.

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These angels are wearing heavy tactical gear and yet more kneepads. The human had them too. This is just kneepad world. I don’t see the necklaces of baby ears so maybe that design thing got ditched or maybe Bobby was being metaphorical.  The important thing is they don’t look like Cas. The weird thing is we know Mikey’s costume sort of does look like a ragged Cas.

Anyway Lucifer is so offended to hear Michael killed him even though it was literally the most obvious thing ever the entire time we’ve known about them and since 12x12 we’ve had extra info to prove it :P

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Omg why are you opening champagne on a traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

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MIKEY

He wanders in like hey I’m awesome but also I need to immediately open with super obvious exposition lines

Lucifer accuses him of being dressed like he came from a western too which goes with the thematics back in the Earth part of the story and also makes me think maybe the costuming choice was supposed to kinda mirror Frontierland Dean’s 2nd costume because why the fuck not this is Dabb era, rules are for suckers :P

I can’t see it w/o the hat but maybe he has a hat elsewhere.

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this hole down into the centre of the earth looks REMARKABLY like the one the 2nd season of Shadowhunters had in the season finale, so I need Magnus to just wander over the rise and close it now. Also his eyes glow gold and cat like. Is his power literally equivalent to Jack’s? He’s like ridiculously OP in that show. I guess all that hiatus watching was research.

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Ah, Asmodeus has learned the “Oh shit it’s the Winchesters” moment already, especially recognising the car. Them driving right onto the scene has the oddest shades of 5x22 without anything being remotely like it except it’s a field, hole in the earth, and car.

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Okay why did Donatello yell “that’s not Donatello”

this is like the reverse of the best version of this scene I’ve ever heard which is the one from the end of Here Be Gerblins in the Adventure Zone which I will not spoil for you except to say this is the worst and also it doesn’t take too much listening to get to that point and I nearly cried laughing so you should probably go listen. More hiatus watching research!

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The other option is D is having a total crisis of self w/o a soul or the evil D is actually the real thing and Asmodeus is helping them for some reason.

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LOL he’s like hi I’m Crowley’s replacement so the line now is “howdy boys” intead of hello boys

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As soon as Jack knows what’s up and sees his new peeps getting hurt he stops because he is precious and he did nothing wrong and I love him

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AWW HE THINKS THEY’RE HIS FRIENDS I LOVE YOU NOUGAT

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Deal with that, Dean.

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Mary like “… should I be shuffling backwards?” “I SHOULD BE SHUFFLING BACKWARDS, BYE”

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Lucifer said he needed Mary, Mikey says he needs Lucifer… I think that phrase is being turned over and ruined now. The necessary step of Dean having said it to Cas that one time when he shoulda said I love you… They had a brief critique of “need and want” and some stuff about i and we, which was what last season was doing, but Cas feels bad bcos he feels needed but not wanted, and this is as much as Dean has said to him - from the depths of his heart - but it’s not enough because that was season 8 and he hasn’t felt like he belongs and he needs that I love you. Uh but w/o using “need” - look, they’re gesticulating with champagne again, I have 1 eye on this at best as we roll through the midlands for an eternity :P Anyway I guess it is time to put “need” in the firing line as the Wrong Word that means that you’re USING someone.

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WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? DEAN DOES NOT SIT AT THE TABLE LIKE THAT. OH MY POOR, POOR BROKEN CHILD LET ME HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS

I know it’s probably for that wonderful shot of them through the door but Dean fundamentally does not sit up against the wall - he and Sam have their places at that table when they have their chats and it’s a serious thing since the entire time theyve been using the kitchen for important plot chats.

Anyway he super not okay bcos that’s his seat he sits at when he’s in his proper place in the dynamic - or improper one but the point is the dynamic is the dynamic when they sit opposite each other and Dean’s opted out and flopped back against the wall instead of sitting where he normally does when he and Sam are in balance. Sam’s connection to his seat has some other flavours of his side of the codependency issues but largely about his lack of assertiveness or getting too messed up about saving Dean, so we’ll see

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AAAH Sam is sitting one seat over as well.

I know it’s a free table but there’s 8 seats and REMARKABLY little flexibility about it.

Dean’s wearing a black henley which is also baaad news. *pats him on the head and follows with a blanket*

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Sam stands (or sits) his ground

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Dean, gosh, I don’t like when the camera follows you because this is probably going to be awful for my heart.

We also have not really had his POV much this ep except the Asmodeus chat up scene

He’s mostly reacted. Like he thinks Jack is only reacting.

I DON’T LIKE THIS SCENE

PROTECT JACK FROM HIMSELF TOO

I hope he was just being curious like a super amped up version of how Kira on Orphan Black found out she has super healing powers so sliced her own arm open while being scared and fascinated with what she was and pissed off the adults wouldn’t tell her anything but this was gross and violent and pls protect Jack because that was awful.

Dean’s suitably horrified though because he has to contemplate Jack is just as freaked out and lost as he is about this whole thing because this is a gross and horrifying way to show that Jack is as fucked up and lost as the rest of them. I don’t think he was actually trying to kill himself esp. because he knew the angel blade already stabbed him and did nothing and even if he doesn’t know what it is and why that’s signficant he knows he didn’t die of something that should have killed him… I hope it’s just childlike curiosity mixed with bleak existential horror as he comes to understand how much he doesn’t understand himself even in the context of the world he’s in…

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OH NO

but also good lines of dialogue they acted super well. Jack is starting to think he can’t be saved if Dean doesn’t think it and is silently asking him to do it because he doesn’t want to hurt people and oh gosh this isn’t 10x09 at all where Deran asked Cas to do it to him… But completely different emotional landscape where Dean WOULD do it and wants to and Jack is only just starting to doubt himself and wonder if he would hurt people and the important thing is not like Dean thinking there was a line he would cross and half-tricking Cas into saying he’d do it by asking him for a favour first, but Cas not being able to oblige him in 10x22… This is Jack being such a good pure piece of nougat that he’s SCARED of what he is and what he can do and beginning to think that he might need to be killed esp. because Dean thinks so and this has been a bad day for him… even though again his nature shone through, Dean thinks it was a “sneeze” and Jack still doesn’t have a developed enough moral compass to understand what he did except that we can see it was a good thing.

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And final shot Jack reflected in the mirror all bloody and sad and I need to zoom in on that later to see his face because like magic the sun is out again when I want to look at the screen.

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End episode here. Good. That means Dean angstily listening to music is in 13x03 almost for sure because I want it to be (uh, sorry that’s not science :P) but it would be a great Berens to Berens chat with self about 9x14 and Dean angstily listening to music there.

I am not actually where were we are any more except powering towards London, but I’m gonna put my laptop away because they’re still topping up the champagne and I just survived a BL episode where nothing so awful happened that I can see the fandom outrage from a million miles away and the worst I can say is that they are an exposition machine and I wish they had more nuanced dialogue because in someone else’s hands that character stuff would have been delivered well rather than just delivered :P


	3. 13x03

The Saga Of Dean’s Fluctuating Grief Scruff

Berens has made me cry exponentially more in each of his episodes for a while. At this rate I will cry 6-9 times in this episode, so I really hope we break the streak.

I’m so pumped for this episode.

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Hahaha me 10 seconds ago: fuk u berens don’t make me cry

recap: how about we paste “goodbye Cas” over the shot of Dean kneeling by dead Cas?

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I have returned with my stuffed toy umbreon “taako from eevee” and I have hugs

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OH NO Jack recap, pasting Lucifer over him in awful flashes and trying to sell his dark side even though he is a squishy.

WELP they’re going right there with the Sam drinking blood parallel with Dean saying when has anything ever gone right for us. Is Jack going to Fuck Up today? Or is that just emotional backstory?

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Awww Missouri’s BFF. I love her already.

I guess this guy is the wraith. I think I remember him from the promos.

Hey, here’s the tarot cards. They’re for the MotW

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The wraith was in the mirror that’s behind them but it didn’t show his face all wraith-y. Pfft.

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Uhoh, Dean’s music is different… Brb need to get a Mittens on the line.

The only word I caught was wall and then we cut to no music and Jack marvelling at the brickwork.

Okay, Mittens told me the song and I looked it up and yeah it’s the Rolling Stones and completely romantically neutral.

This is the bit we got:

Mama says yes, Papa says no,  
Make up you mind ‘cause I gotta go.  
Gonna raise hell at the Union Hall,  
Drive myself right over the wall.

I almost think it was chosen just because Jack was pawing at the wall.

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Jack being fascinated with the bricks in both 13x01 when Sam was ASKING him about the portals between universes, and now when he’s just pawing at the bricks reeeally makes me feel like Jack has a fascination with the brick and mortar pattern, like these lines between the solid planes are somehow tickling at whatever deep down cosmic part of himself knows about the portals. If he’s still figuring it out or something.

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Oh no here’s the awful promo that nearly made me cry last night.

I am so sad that Jack’s been hiding in his room.

It is adorable how he looks at the data stick, like, getting it’s important but totally baffled about HOW and what to DO with it. Sam’s starting to take for granted that Jack is a bit more… well, together, than he actually is. The real question is does Sam know he was stabbing himself?  That’s such a hard thing for Dean to tell Sam, and not betray empathy to Jack - unless he grumpily delivers the news and legs it :P

But yeah, anyway. Sam expecting Jack to be able to do things he can’t, maybe starting to take Jack’s fast learning for granted when it comes to how he’s managed to adapt to burgers and reading and stuff. He’s still a 4-5 day old person, and he’s never done this before… Sam hands him the USB stick without even stopping to think at first that Jack might not be capable of using it…

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*stares at Sam staring at Jack* I think he’s feeling deeply sympathetic - I reblogged some meta about how they have a shared experience here but Jack’s getting so much more than Sam ever did. Ironically, I was gonna make a parallel to Home, without stopping to think that Missouri is here but let’s call it a real meta parallel then - Mary saying even 3 words to Sam in Home was the most Sam had ever seen of her in his entire life and the most words he could remember her saying to him, ever. Of course Mary and Kelly were/are paralleled as mothers, and Kelly to Jack will be a much more pure image because she never did anything dark or made any deals - he’s born because she had no idea she was sleeping with Lucifer, so even though Mary was put in an AWFUL place she made the deal with enough accountability she is held responsible for it, and FEELS responsible for it. Since Jack’s powers are already being textually paralleled to Sam and his demon blood I think this is an interesting thing to put a pin in.

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MIIIISSOURI HELLO

She sounds and looks almost exactly the same. It’s been THIRTEEN YEARS what the hell

She looked older in 1x09

maybe it’s just the different colour schemes and lighting these days :P

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Oh no and we’re back to Kelly

Her words are so important in a kind of free will exposition way. She’s so proud of him!!!

“YOU HAVE AN ANGEL WATCHING OVER YOU”

I know I sobbed about that in 12x23 a bit but just… the reminder, right now. In this episode where we have been teased that Cas is going to be around again (I miss him so much)… I think it’s interesting because Kelly tells Jack that no one can tell him who he can be (which I think may be a problem long term that Sam is interested in moulding him so even TFW aren’t a completely safe bet to hang out with for Jack to gain a sense of personhood - he’ll have to fly the nest eventually) but then she reminds Jack that an angel is watching over him. Obviously she is a Good Person in the show’s narrative, and angels in her perspective are good (because Cas was kind to her) and Cas specifically is AWESOME and this is the reminder that Cas is Jack’s father now apparently and all… but it’s also setting him aside in a way. I think perhaps Jack needs to come to terms with what Cas is that isn’t exactly his FATHER per se but also isn’t just the angel on his shoulder, in the exact same way Dean needs to realise Cas isn’t his BROTHER per se but also not just the angel on his shoulder. It’s that grey area. In Jack’s case, it’s because a reckoning with Lucifer and understanding the potential darkness in him, or his legacy as being Lucifer’s son, can’t be ignored. Cas can’t be pasted on top of it for his deep down personal understanding, and Kelly mentions the father and Castiel as separate entities. The father doesn’t define what Jack is… Cas has a more neutral position, a guiding one… But I think some wires may be crossed with Jack, too, that has given Cas absolute fatherhood in such a way that it’s going to be GREAT for Jack to set his moral compass by such a well-meaning good character who seems to want the best for Jack, but it can’t be his entire understanding of himself.

…

Sorry for just throwing a Destiel parallel into all that but it fascinates me that tbh Sam is like the only one who doesn’t have a complicated relationship with Cas. I guess also Mary got to grips with him around 12x09, but then also didn’t have a whole bunch of contact with him… On the other hand in my Christmas fic I haven’t even got the remotest idea what it will be about yet but will feature all the current living characters in a fluffy Christmas scenario, I’m pretty much ready for Cas and Mary to be the chillest friends :P

-

LOL Sam and Dean talking about how long since they saw Missouri “what has it been a decade?” “MORE” Yeah you FUCKS she said to stay in touch. DON’T BE STRANGERS.

-

That is a cold sweat moment for Dean, like… fuck I haven’t ever even sent her a CHRISTMAS CARD

Maybe he sees her name in John’s journal sometimes and does send her one.

-

Awww and Sam was talking to Jody off-screen, which I love because that is my JAM

*badum tish*

-

Dean is alarmed that Sam handed off the case to her, because he wanted to leave the freaking house and get awaaay from Jack

He’s not that concerned about Jody.

I mean, rationally, he knows Jody is the Toughest Cookie they’ve ever met. She went up against Leviathan WITH AN APPENDECTOMY

But in the immediate here and now? He is PISSED that Sam wants to keep them sequestered away in the Bunker with the one thing he can hardly bear to co-exist with in the same universe.

His stomping off is an End Of moment… Reminded of 9x06 because Berens, but also because in the start of that episode Dean takes the lead from Cas and legs it from researching with Sam and Kevin, and it’s like a horrible reverse motivation. Cas is dead and he can’t bear to be around that horror and guilt and confusion. He needs the distraction, so off he goes on a solo case, leaving Sam behind. His angry “you got me” when he skips out on research and Kevin thinks he has it all sussed out why Dean is leaving is again a reverse of Dean’s self-professed anger at the situation when he knows that Jody will be FINE and of course she’s part of their competent hunter network who can handle things probably a hell of a lot better than them, being an actual cop and all. But it makes one hell of an excuse to go. And Dean was in a pissy mood then as well but it was his own fuck up about Gadreel bothering him and his guilt about what he’d done to Cas. So external motivators help him leave. This time it’s all internal motivators where he WANTS to leave. So he makes it all happen by getting irrationally angry at Sam.

-

CORN FIELD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I know it was most likely just There but hey we have a Turducken slammer poster in the background and corn syrup blah blah, and corn = Cain

Theeeemes, as Mittens says.

-

JODY JODY JODY

-

Missouri drops some heeeavy hints about not having family around any more.

She always did love that car. A reminder she’s known them basically their entire lives, since The Fire, and she knew the car as both John and Dean’s.

Also a handy way to make her a trusted ally and as Mittens says, the car is Dean’s soul and Missouri has seen inside him.

-

HE JUST WANTS HUGS

He heard Missouri and Jody were in the same place and was like FUCK YOU SAM I AM GOING TO COLLECT MY HUGS

But seriously even if he’s kinda putting it all on a bit because he’s miserable, these people are genuinely cheering him up just to see and he’s getting physical comfort from two parental figures to him.

(he’s so weird about Jody being a mom figure)

-

LOL Missouri did the thing

-

The thing literally every single person said they wanted her to do

he should have hugged Jody first

-

Is it just me or did she hesitate on “loss” and then add the “es” after a moment of uncertainty? Please tell me one is not drowning out the other I will die.

Although of course, Missouri is a HUGE reminder of the Mary stuff because she comes connected to their home and Dean is having to re-re-confront that and OF COURSE he does it when he’s lost Mary AGAIN. And pfft I spent yesterday writing about Jody re-losing her son in 5x15 and having the problem of fresh loss after getting someone back you didn’t think you’d ever HAVE back.

-

I love that we’re seeing Missouri’s process. She’s reaaally spelling out the exposition. But in this case I can trust that that’s just because the actual method and knowing that it’s a wraith and his MO is just a random detail to all the more important emotional stuff. That this is just some necessary building blocks to get to the good stuff and this is the fastest way to get us there.

-

Sam immediately starts getting into choppy water and I’m one line into the next scene. He’s bringing up training Jack… Sam, we’ve spent the last 2 weeks talking about how it’s not a great idea for you to try and harness him for your own reasons because it will make you look bad to him. Jack needs to trust you!

I’m worried he’ll end up thinking that Sam giving him the connection with his mom was just a way to soften him up a bit more to Sam. Like yeah on the surface level it’s lovely and shows Sam has been careful and paid attention and collected all the evidence from the house to check if anything will be important for Jack (not the 100s of diapers)… And then found this thing and immediately decided Jack should have it because it would mean so much to him. it’s great that he cares so much he did this!!

But yeah putting the scenes back to back is a little uncomfortable because Sam does have motives, and like I said last time out, if Sam HADN’T just lost Mary through a rift Nougat unknowingly opened, he would 100% definitely treat Jack with the exact same care because he is a sweet guy.

But looks bad.

-

Sam is waving a pencil. He looks like a lecturer.

-

This is a different part of the Bunker or the library from an angle we never see and this is a new table with a different lamp and I am so horrified, as the Table Meta person, to have a bunch of new stuff to work out and write about :P

This is the Yoda Table for the time being

I suppose it’s a new place for a fresh start and, like, virgin territory for meta meaning. Whether it’s the store room or the library the important thing is it’s DIFFERENT and it’s a sort of secluded corner than right out in the middle of the war room or something. It’s a sort of private nook kind of feeling. Sam is trying to make a comfortable environment for Jack.

Jack glances at Sam.

Thing is, Asmodeus got him to open a portal to hell by cajoling him, and Sam’s asking him to get control of basic things like moving a pencil around. It SEEMS safe and like a good exercise to try and get to grips with his powers and learn finesse and control, and for Jack’s sake too. But… Idk, still looks dodgy Sam. I mean I can absolutely and 100% see a surface level where this is adorable and great and Sam has a new friend/nephew, and for the time being I’m enjoying it as it is. But I have this worried feeling that Sam is not going to help Jack emotionally, even if this works in the short term, because Jack has room to be suspicious of what Sam wants, and even if Sam doesn’t ask for a while, he has a motivation for Jack to learn to control his powers beyond JUST wanting to help him. I think their dynamic is great and fascinating, but I am worried that from Jack’s perspective he won’t get the nuance of Sam - Sam needs to open up to him for one thing about his own fuck ups and what Azazel - another yellow eyed demon - did to him.

And Jack glancing at Sam who is watching him so intently is the tension here - can Jack trust Sam when Sam may be just as interested in Jack as Asmodeus was? How can a 5 day old TELL?

-

James has a super nice house.

Also Missouri is “not supposed to call” but they used a recent calls screen on her phone instead of a contacts list, and James was on it, which means that she HAS been in contact with him recently, and therefore prop department messed it up. The CGI in this episode has made 2 errors already >.>

-

OH NO JAMES DOESN’T BELIEVE

-

“it’s coming for you and pa-” nooo

-

WHERE IS PATIENCE

I wanna see her on screeeeeeeeeeeeen

-

WHAT DID MISSOURI DO TO JAMES?

She was a John parallel in 1x09 and allied with him and withholding epic amounts of plot info that only she knew what could have been everything up to and including end of season 2 reveal stuff. Her powers make her kind of a disaster friend tbh. Like, great at a party but if you don’t believe your mother has visions and is, idk, hysterical or something, then OH BOY that makes for some family trauma. We’ll see how this shakes out but right now James at least is successful and rich and has nooothing to do with his mother even though he may potentially be psychic and repressed about it himself, since the wraith will be coming for him and Patience, and we know SHE is.

I kinda don’t wanna make a parallel where she’s the bad parent and fucked up her son who has repressed his powers because oh boy he’s got like a Dean Smith level apartment and this is a can of worms I can’t be bothered to delve into when Patience might be on screen soon.

-

Dean “yes ma'am”’d Missouri because everything is awful, because he’d “yes sir” John and oh god. Ow.

Jody is watching like “what the hell sort of dynamic have I missed here?”

She has been taking notes on these boys for years and she still doesn’t know anything about them. I was thinking the other day watching 5x15 that when she meets them they’re in Fed get up and they bluster at her like they’re the authorities when she first challenges them, until she calls Bobby and sees through it and calls their crap. But something something defensive retreat into surface level clam shell around Jody, re: she had no idea Dean went to Purgatory, was a demon, or that Mary had come back to life, just for STARTERS.

I wonder if Missouri commenting on the car was a tie back to John as well specifically in her alignment. This season is all about fathers and without an actual John for Dean to deal with, bringing Missouri back as a John figure… eep

-

Meanwhile Jack is still squinting at a pencil and calling himself useless, so I think Sam is about to climb on his back and make him run through a swamp while beating him with a stick

(dear god I hope every single one of you has watched Empire Strikes Back)

-

Jack’s catchphrase is “I don’t -” he just doesn’t understand. He doesn’t KNOW.

Asmodeus was “in his head”

Holy shit and then Sam suggests Jack try that and Jack snaps back at him because HOLY SHIT SAM CAN YOU HEAR HOW BAD THIS SOUNDS?

You really can’t, because you think you are doing a good thing but USB STICK, SAM. USB STICK.

Asmodeus was a master manipulator who made Jack want to do a thing so badly and used all the right words to make him do exactly what he wanted. Sam is nice enough not to brainwash Jack like see the pencil, be the pencil dramatics… But asking Jack to remember one of his many traumatic experiences? Noooo don’t do it.

This is a very bad plan, Sam.

Anyway also Jack confirms how Asmodeus manipulated him and shows his innocence and also his feelings on what happened - how horrible it was for him to go through it, and, well, he was 3 days old and he got tricked and he has no emotional touchstones to handle this sort of thing :(

And Sam is just being way too rigorous - we take a break, he gets some food, then he’ll come back and we try again? Nooo Sam.

(btw I have to say I have been saying over and over that Berens writes my favourite Sam, and this is indeed Berens making Sam absolutely fascinating, although I have to repeat, as a totally flawed and messed up person. No one was ever there for Sam to guide him through what he could do. He didn’t even know how he moved that wardrobe the one time he did telekinesis… He’s completely lost and trying to handle this alone and with a lot to prove because Dean’s snapped at him and stormed off, and he wants Mary back… He’s being like Dean - angry and taking it out on Jack - but in Sam’s chill, deep under the surface way, and of course like Dean can spare smiles and hugs for Jody and Missouri, he still can have a kind and well-meaning surface layer just like Dean can have a happy one. But bring on the frustration and he slips and says the wrong things and now he’s acting like a strict teacher….)

Jack’s face that was cast to be both perfectly scowly and perfectly cute is now being used to be very scary and scowly.

-

OH NO MISSOURI!!!

She was badass and defiant to the end but it’s still sad and we knew it was coming because, well… I swear there was spoiler chatter that Patience and Missouri would meet, but I suppose it’s more like Patience is going to find out about her grandma and have to learn about her that way…

I mean the whole point of Wayward Sisters so far has been Jody collecting orphaned girls and she has a living father and until this point Missouri, so she has to end up in a way where Jody is now the only guiding light she has

but bleeeeeeeh.

-

ANYWAY like passing the baton, we get the last scene of Missouri (making a stand) and move to Patience.

HELLO NEW MAIN CHARACTER

-

She’s a neeeerd

I love her

-

She is good at volleyball because she’s psychic

-

heee wonder woman comparison. Blah blah meta from when Dean owned being wonder woman.

-

Her athletic friend looks nerdy and she describes her as being a bookworm athlete because Patience looks cool and athletic (she’s very tall or her friend is short…) so there’s 2 false binaries here: the nerd and athlete one where you can only be one or another. Her friend with the massive glasses and fringe (bangs?) is nerd-coded. And Patience carrying around her files but secretly being good at sports is the direct opposite… I like this imagery, no prizes for guessing where else I apply it :P

-

All the lights are flickering… It would be hilarious if SHE was causing it, just because monsters don’t do that…

I think she is having a vision.

OH it was a dream, cool. (We’re really expanding what psychics can do all of a sudden, because we’re about to send 2 of them off into Wayward Sisters. If Kaia and Patience can hang out in dreams, that would be AWESOME. I bet visiting Patience’s dream landscape once she has her powers under control would be amazing, if 8x08 and Fred’s inner mind is anything to go off of :P)

Also OH NO poor Missouri. She’s used her death as an omen for Patience, like, basically just because her father won’t talk to her. I mean talk about spite, she’s right in the John Winchester model of family, like, well guess I’ll just DIE then, and get Patience to deal with this for me :P

Getting back to those flashing lights, also, even though it was just a dream, I do think it was interesting because Jack blew all those lights. I think it’s a sign of losing control as much as a display of power - if we go from 4x01 and Cas doing it, it was just because raw power on display. In 13x01 for Jack it’s both that and loss of control. For Patience it’s the sign of the supernatural creeping up on her but also she loses control of her dream environment and Missouri invades it to send her the warning…

-

James has something on his screen about crude oil. He’s probably like a stocks and shares guy or something. This house is ridiculous. Patience is going to be the rich kid on the team, and probably adjusting to the gross gritty life of being a hunter :P

-

Ooh she did recognise Missouri - so the contact wasn’t broken off THAT long ago…. I say remembering how I thought she hadn’t changed at all since season 1 :P

-

James doesn’t give anything away about her phoning like, yesterday. He looks baaad about it.

Don’t lie to kids about their powers and heritage…

I say side-eyeing Sam for not getting into the exact thing with Lucifer I was blah-ing on about at the top of this episode. Which is probably not helping Jack understand and control his powers

-

Oh noooo Dean at a Gas n Sip

hearing about the murder on the TV OH NO

I got to ask why it’s night at the fortune teller’s and day where Dean is.

-

Singer directed this and I’m up to 3 boo boos of the wraith not being in the mirror, the phone breaking the story, and the wrong time of day in the footage on TV so I’m just gonna side eye and move on. Maybe he’s having an off week when he made this or something because when he’s not directing Eugenie’s scripts he’s normally competent.

-

Knock Knock hello James

Wait, Dean has got massively more scruffy between scenes.

HE HAS - I WENT BACK AND LOOKED

Is this a continuity about them driving all night?

I am loving the look. Gimme more of the season 9 look Dean.

-

They are kinda treating James like he knows and cares about monsters, when really he’s a stock guy with a fancy house. Wrong approach, but telling the absolute truth. Dean, again, not sugar coating it. Jody has to step in and help with comforting sounding words about the truth. She, also, doesn’t even mention she’s a cop and is acting very much as Dean’s partner on the hunt rather than a cop.

-

Patieeence. At school with her friend, who is badgering her about hot boys. Patience relucantly says okay fine he’s hot. *wonders exactly how gay she is* Probably not with a huuuge crush on her friend but we’ll see :P No one can be that “ugh” about the entire concept.

-

Patiiiience. She’s been ACTIVATED.

-

The fact she had a couple of pencils sticking out of something in her locker just makes me think that over on the other side of the story Sam is trying to activate Jack’s powers via a pencil.

-

AAAH

HAHAHAHA She’s awesome!!!

And she snaps the gross wraith spike off with like 0% of the fuss Dean made.

-

I LOVE the shot of Dean rushing down the stairs to follow the wraith… I also love that Jody is now united with Patience, and she’s gonna glom onto her and drag her into her spiiiiin offffffffff

-

After all the fuss I’m making that better get picked up or I’m rioting.

-

Dean nearly gets hit by a blue van - hey, monsters in blue vans? 8x18, that time when Dean was like “what, my feelings????” when Sam asked him how he was, and then there was that creepy Metatron sweater dude being a terrible stand-in father for Krissy in like the dark timeline version of what Wayward Sisters is promising to become.

-

Bah Dean shaved again… Get the continuity together!!

-

Ohh no Patience thinks Missouri doesn’t caaare… She ditched her after her mom died? heeeey-o John parallels where he emotionally ditched them after Mary died. Only this leads to Patience growing up with no idea about her powers… Except she has been unnerved enough by her deja vu to sound like she’s researched it on wikipedia and reassured herself that hey this happens to everyone…

Well if she’s not queer she’s certainly having one hell of a metaphor journey :P

-

HOLY SHIT SAM. He put Jack in that table because there’s a SECRET CAMERA

you know what Sam has done? Once he knew the BMOL put cameras in the bunker, he’s gone and found their wifi and he’s got into it with undefined magic hacking powers they all have and he’s using Ketch’s surveillance for his own purposes now.

Look. You mean well. You’re reading the sort of parenting book for psychic kids you never had yourself (love it) but this is creepy! You shouldn’t be spying on Jack!!!!

Sam has boundary issues with his magic nephew, more news at 10

-

I know I know  he’s just concerned and worried and wants to do the right thing but he’s not got any frame of reference for how to emotionally nurture someone. It’s a MIRACLE and testament to his nature that he’s come out anything like as sweet as he did. But oh boy this is bad. You can’t just come running in yelling because Jack moved out of sight because now Sam has betrayed that he was watching Jack or WHY WOULD HE COME RUNNING IN IN SUCH A PANIC?

-

Jack’s starting to sound done with everything and I love my Nougat child who likes sitting in dark corners.

-

He’s not sitting cross-legged this time, it’s much more like how Sam found him in 12x23

-

I think Jack seeks out dark shadowy places to lurk

-

His voice has literally changed to be more gravelly

-

OH NO JACK NOOOOOOOOO

HOW DARE YOU THINK YOU’RE EVIL, YOU PRECIOUS CHILD

-

But Dean thinks he’ll be evil and Sam has surveillance set up on him…

-

Oh dear god let this be the Berens Speech of the episode that makes me weep openly

-

OH NO NOUGAT

-

He’s got all his comparisons to live up to but he doesn’t have his angel watching over him!!!

I said earlier that’s a bad comparison for Jack to treat him as his father AND that phrase needs to be hauled out and torn to shreds, but I think some short term guardian angeling will probably be good for Jack and maybe even Cas depending on how he feels when he gets back… I almost trust this season to treat that relationship slowly and carefully since they’re being so absolutely on the nose with character development stuff being spelled out.

-

Sam’s doing the “listen” thing and sitting down… Can you get to Jack?

SAY THE THING

Oh gosh he apologised for pressuring Jack

I didn’t think that would work

I should yell at the screen more

-

HE WANTS TO FIND A BETTER WAY

AND THEN HE TOOK JACK’S HAND AND HAULED HIM TO HIS FEET

-

OH YEAH HERE IT IS “I know what it feels like -” THAT WAS PART 2 OF “SAY THE THING”

-

AHAHA STOP MAKING SAM CRY, BERENS, YOU MONSTER

-

It makes me cry

-

“Dean, Cas - my family helped me through” NOOOOOOOOOOOOPE FUCK OFF BERENS

“you’re not evil, Jack” THANKS SAM, THOUGH

-

Meanwhile: Jody and Dean awkwardly stand next to each other while Patience has a Family Moment.

Dean’s connection to Missouri goes so far back that Patience has to mean something to him in the sense that omg this is Missouri’s family… However she treated Dean (and kinda scared him i think :P) he has an investment in them because Missouri was there at a bloody awful time for him, and she was helpful and good to them (and he has no idea she was lying about John the whole time - tbh the fact that she can see stuff that happened in a scene pretty much just confirms to me that what we DIDN’T see was that the first time John met her he took her to the nursery and BAM she sees the scene from 2x21 that Azazel showed Sam of the demon blood and she’s like… ah.)

(pls refer to my pre-wayward sisters watching notes for actual thoughts on that :P I got super rambly and i’m not going over it AGAIN)

-

OH NO James grew up having total faith in her powers and then she said what James wanted to hear and told him the better news either making a mistake or doing EXACTLY WHAT WE SAW HER DO in her introductory seconds… Temporary help to alleviate pain but in the end - well, that guy’s wife was still banging the gardener whether he knew it or not and one way or another he might find out…)

UGH Missouri what did you do.

-

OH NO JAMES HAS DEAN’S BACKSTORY OF HIS PARENT ON THE ROAD HUNTING MONSTERS

Remember when I said I hated the Dean Smith life he made for himself? I HATE IT SO MUCH

-

I went to vent at Mittens about this and she told me she has been comparing Patience to Kev and James to Linda and that’s another extremely awful way to look at all this :D

-

“I didn’t want that life for you” I think it’s interesting that James managed to put it all behind him SO effectively, especially if he’s somewhat psychic himself (I BET IT HELPS WITH TRADING SHARES, IF IT HELPS WITH VOLLEYBALL. JUST SAYING)… He’s basically done what both John and Mary repeatedly said especially in the context of Sam and just letting him go to school and live a life. Patience has got that - so far - but lo and behold it all catches up.

-

Aaaand James chooses to run again.

Like, it sucks, but “use her as bait and kill the wraith” is generally the better tactic when it comes to just confronting your problems. And the horror genre is ALWAYS about confronting those inner problems. In this case the wraith going specifically after the psychics in the family is blatantly a metaphor for this catching up and James no longer being able to pretend this isn’t what his family is all about. I would say it’s targeted at his decisions and Patience’s awakening - a vision is one thing, an attack BECAUSE she had it seals the deal and makes it impossible to ignore.

And if James runs again, he only puts the problem behind them, to try and live normally but… Patience has already been changed by this encounter and Missouri’s awakening.

-

Awwwwwwww nooooooooo flashback.

She’s so SMOL.

This is all the perfect sort of emotional manipulation to get me completely attached to her.

-

I’m trying not to meta too much between The Man Pain and Patience’s story (she’s the POV character of WS I think? I mean I desperately want her to be, as the new character to the dynamic aside from Kaia who’s being introduced later as a part of Claire’s story - and I think I saw one comment somewhere in the PR and completely latched onto it) but there is something about James saying that Missouri’s influence is poison and Patience learning to be psychic is something he desperately wants to avoid, and the parallel story with Jack also discovering his powers. Patience thankfully only seems to have Sam-like visions and will probably have Missouri’s skill set (i mean sheesh this might not be a memory but a vision but in this case it’s almost impossible to tell apart for Patience except that maybe this is literally the clarity of what she’s remembering on screen :P) - I think it works better in the present day, that the adults are all here to weigh in on what Patience can be.

I think Missouri appearing in flashes mirrors Kelly to Jack, since he’s not getting anything from Cas at the moment, so she’s the beacon of someone who truly believes in Patience, and there was a sort of powers birth transfer awakening thing in the way Missouri dies and Patience gets her first strong vision that she can’t shake off as deja vu.

-

Dean said that Missouri reads objects so Patience is probably getting this vision off the brooch, tbh.

-

This hazy memory is probably actually circa like… season 2 or something, if Patience is supposed to be school aged NOW and the show is THIRTEEN YEARS OLD so if she’s like… 5… that’s season 1 or 2, if she’s roughly supposed to be 18

I am not good at maths btw feel free to call this out

-

That kid REALLY looks like young Patience, in that creepy SPN casting directors way

-

OH GOSH the vision parallels not just to Kelly but Missouri will always look out for her, and that’s very much like Angels Are Watching Over You

-

AAAAAH HE GRABBED PATIENCE

put it back.jpg

-

Is James going to use his own secrit powers he’s been repressing the entire time and find her?

-

HE’S GONNA USE HIS PSYCHIC POWERS TO FIND PATIENCE

Bless this entire metaphor of repression being overcome and accessing the true parts of yourself.

-

Is this the same creepy set that Cas once stabbed a demon in that time when he was looking for something or other? I can’t even remember if that was season 10 or 11 or what he was looking for, but a gif of him wandering around doing The Eyebrow is common enough on my dash I don’t forget that it happened :P

-

Oh great he basically has super wraith powers because he drinks people with super powers.

Stupid creepy wraith

Leave her alone!!!!!!!!!

LOL

“first: gross” I love her.

-

NOOOOO JAMES

You were just starting to be cool

-

Wait is she having a vision, because Jody should probably not be dead right now if she has a spin off to be playing around in:P

I bet Dean’s about to killed too

Yep

owie, that was embarrassing for him

He’s super off his game if he lets himself get killed THAT EASILY

-

This was super metaphoric on so many levels though - once I know what happens with James I should get back to that, but Jody symbolically being killed and she’s moving on to another property with her flock of girls, and DEAN, getting symbolically super killed like stabby stabby stabby, make it look good for the next time they have to recap how often they all die on this show.. :P But yeah, even just showing him dying is fascinating, especially with the context of how he’s feeling.

And oh no Mittens pointed out he’s not just off his game but if he saw Jody being dead, that’s all his worst fears, and ANOTHER dead friend on his hands, and he did specifically come here to protect her, in his words. :<

-

I love the 2nd version of this. The new fight coordinator guy is really showing off. I type in the instant Dean grabs the rope because improvised weapons are a thing now :P

-

I should probably dig up that meta about veils between worlds because even if Dean didn’t die he just got shoved through like 100 hanging sheets and that is ridiculously symbolic.

-

Nice one, Dean.

LOL his face. “welp, killed that guy”

I feel like there was a Moment there. Like maybe he thought hunting would make him feel something but -

oh no

-

HE’S SCRUFFY AGAIN

I feel attacked by the bad continuity but the fact that the bad continuity is because Dean’s apparently due some grief scruff

-

“You handled that wraith! Guess you still got it!!”

*dean pauses* *stares into the nihilistic dark void consuming his soul*

“guess so”

I hate this

-

PATIENCE

Snuggly hoodie is snuggly. I wanna hug her

-

“Thank you, for everything” that phraaase nooo

-

James thinks she should put her gift away and get back to normal… But she has a spin off to go to.

-

NOO DEAN DO NOT DO A IN THIS LIFE SPEECH

I HAAATE THIS

-

elizabethrobertajones  
WHAT THE FUCK HE’S SCRUFFY AGAIN  
I’m phoning the continuity guy  
how do I find his number  
Dean’s scruff has been coming and going all episode :P

mittensmorgul  
wait where are you?

elizabethrobertajones  
Dean’s broken  
pls help him  
this must be the scene they wanted the scruff for  
and he showed up on day 1 of filming clean shaven  
and they were like… Jensen… no

mittensmorgul  
HAHAHA

elizabethrobertajones  
Dean’s gotta talk about how everything sucks and he wants to just go live on the beach in a house made of sticks  
and you need at least 5mm of scruff for that speech

mittensmorgul  
oh no…

-

Anyway Dean and James agree - Patience should go live in her house and they should exploit their skills only for shares and volleyball. Dean is utterly, utterly defeated and he hates the job and it’s the worst and everyone you love will die and you just have to kill monsters all day and it’s not even FUN…

-

please help him

-

YAY JODY

“you don’t have to listen to him” because guess who is NOT THE BOSS OF US ON THE WAYWARD SISTERS SHOW?

That’s right, The Man Pain™

Jody you absolute beacon of sunshine and love and accepting yourself. She can see Dean’s broken and spoke out of turn to what Patience might need in his own grief (and I think that must parallel to Sam’s treatment of Jack somewhat although thankfully they resolved it back to a functioning relationship already) so she offers her an alternative.

OH NO and she refers to Claire as a sort of daughter

haaalp

And she’s so sad she couldn’t keep Claire safe against her nature to be a hunter.

And Jody OBLITERATES repression completely. Go be gay with the Wayward Sisters. :D

“You try to force it down to make someone else happy, you will only make yourself miserable”

I love you Berens.

-

And Jody recruits another avenger :D

-

*glares at my tables tag* Sam is sitting alone in the dark at the war room table, exactly like the end of 9x06. Sometimes being right about the sneaky imagery the show uses feels so pointless because, well, I’m right, but to what purpose does this serve? The tables tag will never bring me glory in battle :P

-

Mittens just warned me to squish Taako for the rest of this scene so I’m in hug mode.

-

“How’s the kid, did he go darkside yet?” “nooope.”

I mean I’m using Sam’s line as a reaction gif forever but OW.

Is Sam gonna call Dean out on what he’s been saying about Jack? I scared.

“He’s messed up because of you”

… uuh. Again. I’m gonna stop asking Berens for the next line of dialogue because i feel like I’m in that gameshow where they are trying to finish a phrase and I’m just asking for all the right letters while thinking I know what the phrase is and I am scared about what that phrase is.

-

And Sam is playing with the rings on the table, which Lucifer once did, and Sam did a few times in season 12 when things were HAIRY.

He fidgets when he is upset with his family.

-

“You think you can USE this freak”

I’m SHAKING. DEAN, NO. STOP TALKING IMMMMMMEDIATELY RIGHT NOW.

I stand by that Sam has a dodgy approach to Jack but fuck that entire concept that Dean just aired, we’re getting into Open Warfare in the fandom between the Sam n Dean factions, I can tell. Like… the only question is is this going to be worse than Sam Hit A Dog or In The Same Situation I Wouldn’t, or both on top of each other?

-

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO JACK IS THERE

-

Dean is wearing a black henley and Jack is wearing a white one I HATE IT

-

“I didn’t end bad” OH WE ARE GOING THERE

WE ARE SO GOING THERE

Sam’s been going there since Dean said “freak” because i have recently rewatched enough of season 1-4 to screeech when Dean said it.

-

And here’s the season 2 thing back again

-

OH SHIT

Dean no

NO.

He’s saying ALL THE THINGS AND HE SHOULD NOT BE SAYING THEEEEM

(I mean… healthy communication and the truth? But like… not doing it at top volume in front of the kid??)

NO THE CAS THING

THIS IS THE SAME FACE AS 9x22 WHEN DEAN SAID IT WAS A DICTATORSHIP

-

CAAAASSSSSS

-

HI BABE

Wakey wakey

-

Okay I had to go to dinner and I took my laptop down and made my mum extremely sad

I noticed a couple of other things on the next pass through, mostly sneaky dialogue repeats that I can’t remember

but pass 2 through that last argument anyway because I was rushing it

-

Oh teardrops in the bead curtain at Dede’s place, because grief. More passing through veils too.

The 9x06 parallel because Sam has a pencil for Jack, and it’s a different room in the Bunker but weird shades of them keeping Crowley there, at least on the negative side of how they’re treating Jack. Not a true parallel - different room and they’re not asking him to write anything down, and Jack is doubling as Kevin.

Thinking of doubles - Patience framed as having 2 consciences about whether she becomes a wayward sister or not in Dean vs Jody - very much like Jack having dual father issues. Jody says “don’t listen to him” for the negative example and wafts it away with love and she’s gonna keep Patience :3

Also I thought of like 18 more reasons why I love Patience while I was watching

-

So, 3rd pass through this argument… WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF

Sam confronting Dean is again something where the episode establishes a mixed sort of approach but overall he has a GOOD approach to Jack and the best he’s getting at the moment. Dean calling out Sam for using Jack THAT loudly and angrily instead of gently critiquing his methods and asking Sam if he’d care if Jack couldn’t get Mary back - that’s something Jack can’t overhear right now but super needs to.

Of course, Dean is the Worst Parent but he hasn’t signed up for that role. He still has an influence over Jack and is too super pissed off to see Jack - and Jack is behind a wall, which takes us to Berens and 12x22 and the wall between Dean and Mary. Dean can’t see Jack for what he is and that means he’s saying all the wrong things and not even able to reach out to parent him.

Jack basically wakes Cas up to get him back so he can have a non-yelling parent who will be uncomplicatedly good and the angel who watches over him.

(More on that dynamic once they interact a bit)

-

The fact Sam summons the spectre of John to tell Dean that he told him to put a bullet in Sam… Of course Dean can refute what John said and that Sam deserves to be saved which is lovely but you know. Awful argument. Not really the time for that sentiment :P Dean can see Sam - knows and trusts him like no one else in the universe; even Cas in some respects, because Cas is complicated and it’s always so messy, that he keeps on giving Cas trust but Cas leaves or does stuff Dean doesn’t approve of, and Sam is generally easier for him to deal with…

(Also the complicated feelings about Cas)

-

Sam goes and demolishes that this is about Mary. That Dean might be SAD about her and losing her but that he knows as well as Sam that she’s gone because she went into that fight willingly, to protect them.

Cas, on the other hand, Dean absolutely can’t see past. Dean’s *entire* problem with Jack is because he lost Cas. Because he looks at Jack and sees dead Cas. Sam can explain how Mary chose to punch Lucifer right in the face (hehe) in some easy steps, but Dean then spells out his perception on what happened to Cas because of Jack.

-

I am so not over how the only time I’ve seen Dean this angry with Sam is in 9x22 and he yells right in his face and - GAH. I mean he’s been angry with him before but it was a cold, sad or defeated anger, usually with tears involved. This is wide eyed, crazed, Mark of Cain Dean, who then walked around the corner and flipped back to a smooshy smile because Cas was there.

And this fight is taking place in almost the same space of turf as that argument, because heeey war room where the wars take place.

-

At this point, after “you might be able to forget about that, but I can’t”, I am pretty sure that Destiel has just gone horrifically canon in like the worst possible way, that Dean calls out the difference in their feelings about Cas.

It’s literally putting on the table “is sam a dick or does dean just love cas in a special kind of way”

and dear god, Sam is not a dick.

Sam is amazing.

-

But not as much as Misha Collins who got a special card with his name on and “starring” above it, just for opening his eyes and sitting up.


	4. 13x04

TBH that is my exact strategy when I am tired and want to go home.

-

it’s 2am and I just woke up after a lengthy power nap/full REM cycle because going to bed at 9 is for cool kids so uh I’m watching the episode but also it’s 2am. I didn’t do it deliberately but here I aaaam.

-

Getting right in there with Dean telling the the truth in the recap - is he really gonna spill it all to a therapist? experts have been awaiting it ever since 1x10 so

-

“experts” being me, I am an independent judiciary body

-

*grief grief grief* *Jack angst*

Oh yeah Cas recap because Cas is back

Should I even write expectations for this episode? I’m a bit late since I already started watching :P Blah blah Glynn blah blah probably going to be fine, blah blah swear I saw someone say she’s “never written Cas before” but uh we just had recaps from 12x19 so I mean who wrote that?

-

this guy has a weird reaction to the dead wife coming back

like, oh, okay, that happened. guess we say hello

-

Is this the “understated” reaction when Cas comes back

-

Oh we’re doing regular old stabbing? Is this a shapeshifter thing or a revenge curse thing? Is it all going to be romantic couples? because lol pls don’t

Also the recap did expressly list off 2 dead moms and a dead crowley along with a dead Cas who is also a brother and father to active main characters

-

Sam like “hey”

Dean like >.> Are you trying to be friends after I yelled at you?

-

Sam being remarkably cool about Dean’s netflix and holy oil suggestion

-

Dean being extremely less cool about Sam’s suggestion

-

They’re sort of recapping the argument from the end of last episode for us, which is good because it wasn’t in the recap unless it was but it’s 2am and my brain randomly discarded that

-

oh my god it was

okay these are not meta notes

-

Sam’s trying to play at grief counsellor and it’s super not working because he’s using it as their fight. You don’t get in a snappy comeback about “oh so you want to move on”

Dean looks extremely murderously done with all this because How Dare etc

-

“For me”

God damn puppy dog eyes.

-

awww Jack’s watching The Clone Wars. Because he is a wee new baby and this is his star wars generation I guess.

mittensmorgul  
pffft. (I have never seen Clone Wars so I have no idea what that even means)

elizabethrobertajones  
It’s the adventures *drum roll* of Darth Vader when he was still Anakin, before he went evil  
Ashoka or however you spell it is his Padawan

mittensmorgul  
aahhh

elizabethrobertajones  
Jack’s identifying with her and not with the pre-evil but still getting the Imperial March music layered over his bad decisions Anakin  
the entire show is 10000 episodes  
just an endless “we can’t make him go evil because that happens in the movie but we can tease basically everything up to that” stuff

mittensmorgul  
At least he’s iffy about Anakin…

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah  
good choice, basically  
it’s also brand new  
he found the non-dinosaur version of Star Wars  
of the previous generation :P  
and it’s less political than the prequels  
I think The Clone Wars is generally well-liked  
whereas nerd rage dictates the Prequels are the Worst  
and I guess it’s Too Soon to get into the newer Star Wars films since we don’t know how the arcs of the new kids pay off

[side note: I haven’t watched it per se because there’s tons of it but I’ve been in the same room as my brother watching it, and seen a lot of pop culture general knowledge that I’ve sponged up so I could be wrong about some little details as I mostly know how it’s been described to me]

-

Also Jack’s identifying with the female character, because fuck off toxic masculinity, she seems awesome and he has no idea he isn’t “”supposed”” to. She also is one of the aliens with the huge tentacle things on her head so idk if it’s a good idea for him to get too into this without  meeting more of the general population - Sam’s probably right

-

Uhoh, Jack kinda does a snarky eyebrow about “you’re the good guys” - Did Sam fail to sell it or is Jack really just starting to have trust issues now he’s watching TV with black or white morality (literally a dark side and a light side - hrm.) and given his experience of the Winchesters yelling their very shades of grey takes on him at each other

-

Well he hasn’t learned to be cagey about overhearing that

-

*blink blink blink* *sigh*

-

“You’re *using* me”

Oh no, poor Jack :(

-

He also implicitly trusts Dean’s judgement more than Sam’s bonding, despite how Sam has made all the movements towards him. As people have been meta'ing, Dean’s being extremely honest and Jack’s setting his markers by that, even if it’s horrific to the point of deciding he has to be evil because Dean thinks so.

-

Sam says he, Dean and CAS closed the rift - hey, Cas got knocked out by Lucifer in round 1 of that as a distraction and Crowley helped you close it.

They probably have not explained Crowley to him at all.

-

At least Sam is being honest now about what happened with the rift, and that it’s their mom

and Jack speaks the language of lost moms. Now HE looks at SAM with sympathy.

Probably also explains Dean…

I think Jack is defaulting back to thinking about Dean way more than Sam’s opinion of him, although perhaps he may like Sam more now he was upfront and some of why “so uh yeah I was KINDA using you” is on the table

-

Jack was wearing a darker henley, which tbh with Dean wearing them again all of a sudden makes it blurry to me if this is not about his Dean-alignment more than colour coding his feelings on being evil (like how Amara’s nail polish started off black and got right down to light grey by the end of the season). Now he’s swapped to being the Cas Intern.

Ow.

-

and aww all the fake IDs. There’s a lot to take in about these guys :P

-

Oh no Dean said “loony toons” on the episode which may or may not be an exact use of 8x08 for Cas, for Jack. Jack’s a bit more of a trial run about wanting to BE a hunter since he is mostly just curious. Also amused Dean has to rephrase for Jack because he actually knows he’s a week old or so, and he’s not going to enjoy repeating himself or explaining, while he always found it kind of funny to just say a whole string of incomprehensible pop culture at Cas without slowing for a breath.

Not funny now, is it Dean?

-

Wait have they never actually fought a revenant aka, idk, it sounds like a naturally occurring zombie? They mention it from time to time but as far as I remember they’ve never actually called zombies revenants because they’re one of the shows where they just embrace the horror movie tradition about zombies completely, so it always seemed like revenants were something slightly different, at least, in the sense that they get named like a different category. And they just lumped them in with ghosts here, as restless spirits but i guess this time *with* the body?

-

Dean tells Jack to sit, like he was a dog being kept in the car.

-

Unlike dogs he knows how to work the door handle.

-

Jack no don’t touch the blood

oh good Dean stopped him

-

Aw no he’s still wearing the dark henley under the tan jacket. That’s awful :D

-

Pfft Dean’s like immediately “it’s a revenant” because they know what those are really well after a billion years hunting and we’ve never watched them ever name anything on screen a revenant before with that vocab, and they’re really sticking with not crossing them over with zombies exactly…

I mean Dean said he wasn’t a revenant after he got back from hell and I think they’ve chattered about them before

if I check this on superwiki it’s way too early for there to be a spoilery “so it’s not a revenant” line from later in this episode highlighted when I hit the search :P

Oh good, I’m glad I’m right.

A revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that returns to terrorize the living, usually people it knew in life. Unlike the zombie, a revenant is not under another person’s control, and has returned from the grave on its own for a specific and often personal purpose.  
In 4.01 Lazarus Rising, Bobby accuses Dean of being a shapeshifter or a revenant. Dean proves he’s neither by cutting himself with a silver knife.  
In 8.06 Southern Comfort Garth takes a call from a hunter asking how to deal with a revenant. Garth tells him to get a casket and some silver spikes, then nail it in and bury it. He also warns that getting bit will hurt like hell, but will not turn you into one.

-

I wonder if those were revenants in 4x07 and I only ask because it was like almost exactly an anniversary to it in OUR time :P It’s still May or maybe June for them in-show

-

Okay Dean left Jack to dig but Sam chased after Dean rather than it being a synchronised Winchester ditching of Jack :P

-

Little on the nose about “You’re starting to sound like dad!” :P

“Is that a bad thing” Oh Dean, no.

Fortunately the theme of this season is fathers so I suspect you’re gonna have to deal with this at some point or another

-

Sam like “the drill sergent thing won’t work on Jack” to the sound of Jack merrily digging in the background because Dean told him to

-

I really hope that wasn’t an on-set hazing that they actually left him to dig :P

-

I love my smol gravedigger son

-

I love how Jack did all the digging anyway because Sam’s still not actually dirty and Jack’s still standing in the hole

-

Lol not a revenant, well there’s a surprise. I’m glad I double-checked the lore anyway because I have the time to so I’m not going to spend the rest of the episode like “wait what IS the difference between them and zombies anyway and why have we never seen one?”

-

I mean it’s not gonna be a ghost either, we’re 9 minutes in and they’re salting and burning because it makes more sense to Dean to do that than not to - I guess a precaution for accidentally angering her spirit for digging her up…?? :P I mean no he still thinks she’s a ghost but I mean maybe it’s not a total waste of salt.

-

OH NO Jack don’t ask about if Kelly is a ghost, that’s very painful.

-

OH NO I thought he was going to ask about Cas but instead Dean said “what gets burned, stays dead” and that hurts a lot

-

FORTUNATELY for me the viewer as opposed to Dean the grieving ball of angst over there, I can go check up on Cas immediately.

-

He doesn’t seem to be doing too good but more in an existential way since he’s at least up and walking about.

I like how Jack woke him up but it’s probably got to be like a baby bird has to hatch itself.

-

He’s using up all his “hellos” on the void. Save one for Dean.

-

You know if the MotW is imitating dead loved ones I have to say I am not exactly looking forward to this :P I didn’t say earlier but the cold open gave me 11x13 vibes and honestly I don’t want a repeat of the stress of waiting for Cas to show up for Dean but it not happening… Okay, belatedly 10 minutes in, there’s a baseline expectation for the episode that that doesn’t happen. Then again I forgot to check the names at the bottom of the screen except for being happy to see Misha’s there so they could spring anyone on us

-

Throw a real curveball in just like bring some random dead loved one from the first 3 seasons back :P

-

Or waste Jim Beaver’s season 13 appearance on it and he’s never even in the AU with Mary :P

-

Anyway Jack is waiting patiently in the car.

(or, well, not so patiently.. He’s starting to get an idea of how the job works, and that Dean is usually repeatedly wrong about everything as he throws spaghetti at the wall about the case…)

-

Anyway, dead son, dead wife, so that’s quite a neutral combination.

-

Asking what they had in common probably means the grief counsellor, but Dean says that and then we go back to Cas right when I’ve been musing on the loved ones coming back for them thing and honestly it’s like Dean’s words are just summoning Cas right now.

……. 8x08 used flashbacks to summon Amelia for Sam, just saying

-

I hope Cas finds Billie and hopefully a bar immediately and they can become drinking buddies.

I don’t even think she’s in this one?

-

I like those assertive footsteps though. “I have no clue where I am, I am just going to walk in this direction like I mean it”

-

Lol they’re in Madison i was KIDDING about bringing back a dead loved one from like season 2 or something. Oh well, if it’s her, it’s her. I’m still bitter about Sarah because I only just re-watched it with my mum the other day.

I should probably stop bringing up Sam’s dead or lost girlfriends because it’s just bumming me out on his behalf.

-

Teehee “he’s not our intern”

well

-

“I asked you to keep an eye on him” “I can see him”

It’s amazing Dean didn’t volunteer just to get away from Jack

-

Sort of weird existing in a post That Declaration world where I can just canonically know Dean staring at Jack is making him think sad things about Cas without any fear whatsoever

-

Oh boy killer grief counsellor probably. “Mia is promising to provide the catharsis I’ve been craving for so long” and then she gets ripped to shreds by her son.

I feel a little bad reading this woman’s diary, but the first line is about not “getting over” it and learning to live with it. Blah blah heal and rebuild yourself, blah blah whole again but never the same

-

“Shrinks… Snake oil for the mind.” “Or how healthy people deal” Pfft

-

Jack being baffled by the issues of customer vs hot dog guy without understanding it’s an ancient war fought across the world

-

Dean equates “catharsis” to “happy ending” - I can’t tell if he’s innuendo-ing or accidentally revealing too much and being mournful about it.

-

The house has a great fence - its parts are all misaligned. Very visually uncomfortable :D

-

Awww someone said “hello” to Jack and Jack was like !!!!! another person!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELLO! :D :D :D

how can you possibly think he’s bad

-

Anyway I was about to type that Dean hates it because of course he feels the most vulnerable talking about his feelings all the time, either for performing Dean reasons about needing to keep up a facade of strength (LET YOURSELF CRY, MAN) or because feelings for Cas being inconvenient to him

-

UHoh Dean grabbed Jack’s shoulder - he did it to Mick to be threatening last year in a Glynn episode, while Mick was wearing a long tan coat. And called Jack “Spock” which is not really accurate characterisation at all. Jack’s pretty much nothing but a bundle of emotions, he’s just not used to using them around other people. Now CAS on the other hand…..

-

I do like that Mia decided to see them because Jack is sweet and was upfront about losing his mother and he’s just adorable.

They bluff their way in by losing a collective mother, Sam once again lining them up as family and siblings.

Play it cool, man. You’ll scare Jack off.

-

I’m starting to think we haven’t seen Cas between scenes for a while because Dean hasn’t said anything angsty enough

-

But idk if we trust her or not. She has a lot of alcohol stashed on that shelf.

-

Jack wisely doesn’t sit on the sofa with them all.

-

“Oh well Mom was great and now she’s dead so what’s the deal with catharsis” Dean, no.

-

Sam continues with what should be the pre-arranged plan of spill closed truths like well we don’t journal but our dad did

also I am so annoyed that confirms they don’t keep hunter journals??? grarghgh

Google has ruined this generation

And Dean makes fun of journaling as being for little girls, even though Sam literally just said that about John. Last year in 12x04 he said he was a 13 year old girl when trying to text Mary so he’s actually regressed even further backwards at losing her again >.>

-

“I’m good with death, closure, the whole friggin bottle of Jack”

it’s a shame he would never put a bumper sticker on Baby, because that…

-

Oh boy we’re still having this fight. “My brother’s delusional…” yeah oh dear.

Is this going to be one of those things where I basically just want to transcribe the whole thing?

Dean calls out Sam for not being able to even admit that Mary’s gone so he hasn’t even moved past denial - which to be fair, Sam IS right she’s not dead and that they DO have a means of getting her back and everything… Was thinking about how last season was a “Dean is right about everything” season and this time is clearly a Sam is right about everything one… but of course both only to a certain degree, and in this case it’s much blurrier about approach and how these fights are going because of course Sam’s not being a perfect Saint Sammy that Dean is being unfairly awful to in the entirety of what’s going on here. Sam IS struggling and resisting confronting things in his own way and adopting Jack as a pet project is definitely a form of avoidance or at least wanting to get concrete closure on Mary’s death before he will fully mourn. Which makes Sam and Dean existing in the same place terrible because they’re only in the same physical location

anyway Dean’s about to yell  about how hard this all is for him too so I better unpause once I’m holding a stuffed toy again

“At least you had a relationship with mom” WAHEY

I mean that was awful but I’m delighted Sam yelled that because there’s ALWAYS something else going on underneath Sam, and I’ve been waiting for more Sam and Mary angst, since I spent so much time on them last season and at least obliquely referred to this… Talked a lot about how hard Sam had it to reconnect with Mary… That Words with Friends scene from 12x07 was basically floating along waiting to come back up at some point or another, but it took Sam a long time to reach out to Mary personally, and really only in 12x14 (hi Berens, I just accept you and Glynn are brain twins these days) did he pick a side in THAT fight and picked Mary. And we said it was to get closer to Mary but he made it all about the BMoL instead of just confronting that he wanted a relationship with her, and the BMoL ended up just keeping them apart ANYWAY and tl;dr am I going to have to write the reverse version of A World Without Monsters from Sam’s POV or can we just agree that my subtext in that fic was exactly what just bubbled up here? :P

-

I just spent the entire length of that paragraph trying to work out when I wrote the meta about how Sam felt about Mary and it took me until that last point to realise it was not a meta, it was a fic where I roundly abused poor Sam for the sake of making that point.

-

Dean’s like hey therapy is great! *eyebrows at Jack* *snarky smile at the doc*

-

Sam is like *anger-drinks water*

*refuses to cry as well*

BLOOD

(CRY, DAMMIT, SAM.)

-

That sign was down earlier

is this the poor receptionist?

-

Or… ew, shifter gunk?

-

LOL Dean just takes a flask out of his pocket in the middle of their appointment

Mia asks him to look at Jack, which is the last thing he wants to do, but blah blah meta about 12x22 and how he needs to “see” Jack, and she’s pointing out that Jack is terrified which is exactly what Dean needs to see about him

subtle

She actually points out his anger issues as well so I think Dean’s getting homework whether he has to write it in a journal or not :P

-

*suddenly everyone is pointing guns*

Hey if she’s a a shapeshifter why does she live in an all-white house when shifting makes bloody goo stains everywhere?

Or her assistant, I guess. They haven’t had eyes on him :P

-

Ooh that explains why the guy was not surprised to see his wife. Well, kind of surprised, but not nearly horrified enough.

-

Sadly if she is telling the truth that means someone else is using her method to get their guard down to kill them for kicks…

-

Also shades of 9x13 because they had that spa where the monster would use their unique skills to help, but then of course another of their kind - a sibling - had to go and ruin it…

-

Oh hey, it’s Cas! I guess the time ran out on a good transition from Dean, so we go over here on “I’m telling you the truth”

-

Lol it’s another Cas… Who ever would have expected it. /Misha being the worst at spoilers

Or something with a very silly voice. “Friendly neighbourhood cosmic entity” that sounds like that and won’t show its face is either someone pranking Cas or about to go very bad.

Cas is like “do I look like that” “I’m getting a new coat as soon as I’m alive again”

-

if this thing is The Empty itself it’s probably kinda crazy after eons being nothing

-

Oh NO Cas’s face when he says “every angel that ever died is here?” because oh boy did you put like 90% of them in here yourself. There’s about 3 faces you’d be happy to see again of the entire lot. Hey, it’s never too late to give Cas that guilt all over again that made him stay in Purgatory out of penance.

-

I mean among other things but it’s probably worth mentioning there are a whole bunch of lil purgatory parallels here in the loosest sense of it being a hostile other realm, and the way Cas is basically Dean in Purgatory in here.

-

Cas has been back for like 5 minutes of screen time and I want to protect him and wrap him in blankets

there’s no need to be mean, The Empty, just because you got woken up… I say… at nearly 4am… because I woke up when I didn’t want to…

you know what, The Empty’s being mean to Cas probably kind of justifiably, even if it’s a dick.

-

pretty clever to use a shifter as the motw in this episode too

-

oh, poor Cas is horrified to think Sam and Dean made some sort of deal for him

he says “I don’t know” which is ironically what Jack’s saying all the time

like father like son

-

LEAVE HIM ALONE

-

last episode we had James keeping memories of Missouri, who he had cut out of his life, in a box. Now Mia has a box still dedicated to “Buddy” her asshole ex who hurt her, and good on her for leaving him. He’s another shifter, we’re halfway through the episode, so we probably need to find him now, and also have a good 10 minutes more of whatever’s going on with Cas. :P

She also owns up to have done much worse things in her past with Buddy, although presumably not killing people, and probably because they were super toxic together, and she had the sense to get out and try and help people now.

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Jack said “I’ll come with” which is adorable. He’s learning to be like them :D

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Wheeeee he’s riding shotgun! Guess Dean couldn’t make him stay in the back without Sam around.

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Sam’s plan’s don’t always work out :< Oh no, Dean, you still don’t have much faith in Sam’s ability to handle himself.

Fortunately this does seem to be a mostly Sam is right season, and I think of all the overwhelming reasons why you don’t trust Jack, not trusting Sam to trust Jack is probably relatively low on the list underneath the Cas stuff or you’d have just yelled that at Sam the other day instead.

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Uh, why do I feel like the shifter just phoned Sam and somewhere between here and there something went really wrong?

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Oh god I’m going to have to watch the face peeling scene with my own two eyes at 4 in the morning, aren’t I?

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Meanwhile Mia explains why her catharsis works to Sam - I hope he doesn’t sneak back at the end of the episode for a chat with “Mary” because that would be AWFUL.

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Oh it was that other guy - wait, also, Sam was already doing this before Dean phoned? Seems like he doesn’t trust Dean’s methods either :P

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CAAAAAAAAAS

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I love how Cas is so practical like, “will you pay me $200 to stop annoying you and go away?”

UHOH guess we’re getting right into it. “You don’t want to go back” “Sam and Dean need me” You don’t want to be needed, you want to be wanted!

Wheeee text on that and also wheee over on the other side of the story last week Dean finally made the i/we distinction about Cas. Now we just need to get them alive and well and actually dealing with crap

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oh boy I shouldn’t have paused there except that i suppose for the sake of meta-ing remotely clearly it was probably a good idea not to watch straight through from that into the empty accusing Cas of having feeeeelings and “I know *what* you hate, I know *who* you love, what you fear.” especially since Cas hates being needed but not wanted and uh Dean made the i/we distinction at long last over on the other side of the story so um does Cas fear something related to all that?

I mean to be fair Cas has been through this exact thing before with “he’s in love… with humanity” / “all of it for one man” which was an “i/we” distinction of planetary proportions :P Of course he just mutely responded to it there because he was sad Dean was dead, and had no idea Metatron had accused him of being in love in any form, so that was Metatron’s private joke to himself.

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The Empty telling Cas there’s “nothing for him back there” also makes like next to no sense if you take season 12’s family read at surface value and has the bonus of being, I’m pretty sure, a line Elrond tells Arwen in the movie when he’s trying to make her leave Aragorn and go across the waters to the undying lands.

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I know they’re just starting with it in a long selection of terrible things that happened to Cas but starting with his grace being stolen really sucks :P

Especially when I am still daily haunted by his season 9 arc.

See above: Metatron and “in love with humanity”

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More miscommunication of the “didn’t bother to call you” variety (I hope this doesn’t blow up in Sam’s face, although of course trying to nurture Jack is slow mo doing that, especially if he and Dean are meant to swap stances on the kid >.>)

The intern pulls Mia aside for a chat.

OH NO Jack wants to see his mom. OH NO OH NO

I will be so upset if that happens…

Oh nooooooo

he’s crying.

Who can say no?

This is extremely awful.

I guess Glynn didn’t want to let Kelly go like that. I’m glad if Mia was going to do this for anyone it would be for Jack and not Sam and Dean’s cycles of nonsense.

I REALLY hope the bad shifter doesn’t burst in here and try to/actually kill Mia right now. Jack doesn’t need that in his life.

In the mean time, Mia better friggin HUG Jack even if it’s technically hollow and he would know it.

Also did she do the whole disgusting skin thing or can she transform on the spot?

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HUGS FOR THE NOUGAT BOY

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They look so much alike :’)

Oh no Jack you probably don’t feel anything because they made you horribly depressed within 2 days. Also you have angel grace. Historically not good for helping you feel things. You’re sweet and cry about your mom and feel bad about stuff in other ways so I think you have a heart no matter what, like Cas does.

Mia gets some catharsis from getting to hug Jack and reassure him that even if he’s a monster and what makes him in-human isn’t letting him emote how he’s supposed to, he can still be good. She’s got a monster soul, after all. There’s a lot of good monsters out there.

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I was about to say lol is this now Sam not on the phone because he actually is a shifter now mostly to tease past!Me but then they panned down and Dean’s unconscious, which makes sense because they probably still want to show us Dean tearing his own face off at some point and honestly I’d rather just get it over and done with because if it’s still to come after this D:

“that was too friggin easy” though - Dean getting overwhelmed in another fight. He’s really not had a great rate of success… He only beat the wraith last episode with Patience’s warnings, and other than that it’s been a terrible track record even if he fights back as hard as he can when he gets jumped

-

shifter!Dean2 better not go in and try and kill Jack

-

Not gonna have much luck, I just don’t want to watch it :P

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MORE HUGS FOR JACK

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WAIT NO YOU CAN’T HUG HIM AND THEN HAVE HIM KNOCKED OUT IN THE SAME SCENE

I TYPE NOT LOOKING AT THE SCREEN BECAUSE DEAN’S RIPPING HIS FACE OFF

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Shifters are gross

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Oh no don’t call Cas a disappointment, The Empty, we’re so proud of him!

-

He just told him to “save yourself” which is probably going to have the direct opposite result to what he wants while I’d hope Cas goes and does exactly that

“I’m already saved” blah blah Cas insults The Empty and I love him, “because somehow I’m awake, and I’ll stay awake” - exactly how many times can I use “i love him” as punctuation in one sentence?

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Where is that gif of the woman banging the pots and pans about not getting any sleep so they’re not getting any sleep

that’s something I ought to have saved :P

Someone almost certainly has made a post already.

-

Cas is the literal embodiment of “fight me”

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This Buddy guy is a total douche. He says in this world everyone uses everyone. Which is a theme of the season I guess - Cas feeling used, Jack feeling used… He’s the villain with the most negative version of the theme in his mouth right now

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Dean’s got to pep talk Jack if he wants to save the day or Jack goes and saves the daaay - I’d prefer Jack does it

Look, Mia’s getting hurt and she was kind to you and in the most literal use of character mirroring in 1000 miles is an actual stand in for your mom!

-

Ooh is Jack gonna save Sam instead? Dean just pep-talked him specifically about how Sam believed in him which was having to start to admit that Sam, well, believes in Jack. Which Dean couldn’t even accept last episode when he was saying that he was just using Jack

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Yay thanks Jack, kinda figured Sam wouldn’t get shot :P Jack’s powers are fascinating - he’s definitely bending time… from Sam and Dean’s perspectives last time they were caught in it they were at least sort of aware of things, but Jack pretty much works in bullet time.

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I also like how he kind of had a ridiculous “NooooO” because he’s been watching Star Wars. I don’t know if there’s a “Nooooo” in the Clone Wars but I mean have you met a Star Wars

-

Anyway good riddance douchey ex with extra douchey powers.

-

I love the shot of them all standing together and Jack has that benign :3 face on again. He’s really insufferably cute.

-

Ewww the Bunker sink is gross. I assume that’s from decades of lying in disrepair and that those are stains Dean could not get out.

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I guess Jack’s getting a glass of water and Dean’s midnight snacking. I have no other explanation for this encounter despite the fact it could theoretically happen at literally any point of the clock :P

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Oh gosh, is he going to give Jack a beer

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Yay, actions helped

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Aw, the other beer is for Sam. Guess this doesn’t have to be midnight after all. I thought he might have a longer chat with Jack

-

oops is this the beginning of the slide in the other direction? Sam’s been undermined and even though he was proven right to Dean’s eyes and Dean’s had to grudgingly hand Jack the win in the case and admit it to Sam, Sam’s like, “I guess”

And they don’t know what Jack asked for from Mia because patient confidentiality! Argh!

Oh no Sam don’t start wondering if Dean is right.

AAAH they’re actually talking about things really well. Dean’s like “don’t say that” - even if he can’t believe it he doesn’t want to HURT Sam and rob him of his hope… Sometimes yelling about things does make them get better in the long run once you get it out there >.>

And Dean deputises to Sam for the feelings. And admits how HE has been feeling, because he believes in nothing, because all his faith has been taken away because there was only one thing he ever ended up believing in no i didn’t see the next scene transition before i hit pause what are you talking about

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Again, though, if this is Cas back in the mortal plane after annoying his way back to life (worrisome, since he’s 2 episodes out of reuniting with them and where’s Billie? Oh gosh is Billie back for reals too if he IS back? Whaaaat.) then that’s another awfully convenient moment to transition scenes from. Dean finally using “i” instead of “we” about Cas and making it abundantly clear that he and sam didn’t feel the same about that, was, whether the direct reason or just narrative karma they chose to bestow on Dean, what made Jack reach out to Cas. Now he admits out loud that he doesn’t believe in anything with the implication when you look at Dean vs belief that this is about Cas, and we go over to Cas definitely at least in an improved situation.

Goddammit that’s the new coat which means he didn’t come back naked but wait! Lizzy’s hope wasn’t the same as everyone else’s at all! Although that was a shallow moment of defeat :P Mwa ha ha, I was hoping Cas would come back and be gifted a whole new Cas get up and lo and behold unless he chose to manifest these clothes onto himself and there’s noooo ulterior motive at all going on here (uh… probably not going to get more than 1 per show and we used it up on Mary :P) but he’s confused and waking up and the last time we saw him he was in the clothes he died in… So of course if he’s being sent back to earth then someone else chose the battle armour he’d be returned in. One Cas, fit for purpose.

Also, realising once he sat up more it was the new coat makes me pretty sure he is back on Earth.

Also he looks happy to be here and I think he can tell :P

Same, Cas. Same.


	5. 13x05

I’m not used to getting what I want.

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Expectations: holy crap am I excited to see Billie again. Yeah yeah Cas or whatever, we know he’s back and would be coming back from the moment he died, and all the rest is just flavour text… BILLIE is an utter treat and given A: how she died (not just dead reaper killed off for man pain as a minor thematic antagonist, but also woman of colour on the show which was a bummer and at least she alters their post-death appearances dismal stats even if she isn’t back-back as her full and healthy self a la Cas as a worst case scenario >.>) and B: the themes she embodied, and C: that Cas just got punted back OUT of the Empty, well, I am ridiculously pumped to have her (or the image of her >.>) around again, because of the utterly fascinating thematic conundrum she’ll represent and because Billie was the most freakin awesome character ever, and Lisa Berry just exudes this raw calm power, and I went and watched Shadowhunters over hiatus 90% because she was on it in like 3 episodes and lo and behold she was a powerhouse in her scenes there too :P

Of course I have a personal stake too and as a meta writer it’s not quite so obvious, as a shitposter you might have caught me endlessly referring to it, and as me personally inside my head, I know that I introduced Billie to Terrible Coffee AU to be a side character to the drama, meaning to embroil her in it as a voice of amused-warning-to-later-friend for Cas, and began constructing an entire narrative to explore cosmic consequences in as if post-death the show’s Billie had wandered over to my silly AU and was using her extreme disappointment in them all to add another level of irony to the characterisation (listen: imagining what face the canon character would make at their role in your AU is a great way to characterise and people think I’m good at it, so free writing tip :P) and I had to make Billie proud about what I wrought. 

I failed to actually write that section in time for this episode, had no idea there WAS an expiry date and that Billie would come back, but here we are and I’ve accidentally over-thought Billie to an absolutely astronomically disproportionate degree to probably most people around these parts for the sake of having her tease Cas about Dean from the deck of a boat while they were sipping cocktails together. :P

I can and will mentally insert a cocktail into Billie’s hand in her scene(s).

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OH AND THEN THROW IN THAT THIS IS A YOCKEY EPISODE. Of all the current writers, he’s the one who makes me lose my chill completely. He’s got an incredible way with character and emotion which I absolutely adore, so I find it pretty hard to worry about all the nervous little things I worry about aside from how much the grand scheme of things will let Billie back. And season 13 seems to be going pretty in my favour as a viewer and meta writer so. Super sublime chill.

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Oh boy the recap people are trying to put us out of a job.

Superimposing Dean’s speech to Patience over Sam crying over Dean nearly dying in 2x01 and ghost!Dean lurking behind him, which of all the reminders that they die a lot is a… lot of a thing. Because John etc. Season 2 theeemes everywhere. And then of course them getting shot as ghosts in 4x15 aka time to save Tessa. And Dean wasn’t having an easier time in that episode, hell-damaged and talking to Tessa about how he wished he’d gone with her. Could just be subtle reaper reminders because the next shot is Sam detoxing demon blood in 4x21, nudging us into new territory for Jack theeemes. But that’s part of the “pain” in his speech, “horror” is Dean hilariously dying in 3x11 when hit by a car, which, well, wasn’t hilarious at all for Sam or the rest of that episode for us once the dying montage was over, and just reminds us how much they’re dicked around with by the universe… And then “Death.” Over. Death’s hand.

Look, I am a simple person with simple wants. I would have been satisfied to just have this about Billie but now you’re making me want to see DEATH again and see what the heck happened with him. I mean I’ve always sort of wanted to see him back again because if Billie would be pissed at them… :P But I could accept she was his stand in from now on. That she WAS the new Death all along, even, for our wild spec. Now I am MADLY excited about how they’re going to utilise all this stuff because oh hi have you met me the reapers and death stuff is my absolute favourite stuff on the show. I was always hoping this wasn’t going to be a cop out with the tasty sounding title, and it seems like they want us to really be on the ball about the themes here, to whatever end.

(Just having paused it to squeal here, it could be a fake out about Death because the first shot of him in his killer intro montage was his hand with his ring because in season 5 that was the cue we needed to know that was the ring we needed and that Death was who he was supposed to be… Logic dictates the ring crumbled in 10x23 but if they wanted to invoke Death without bringing Julian back…)

Weeeeeeeehheeheheheheeee Death’s “affront to the balance of the universe” speech in 6x11 where he was resentfully giving Sam’s soul back on one condition… The same thing Billie was pissed about in 11x02 onwards. Is he here to cover for her reappearance and make this seem like it’s all just a big cosmic theme? Because something tells me this episode is about their deaths somehow or another, either temporary, threatened, or big picture :P

Or it’s confirming that Billie is Death, there’s always that because the next transition is Dean killing Death to Billie LITERALLY CONTINUING DEATH’S SENTENCE FROM 6x11 - “you cause disruption on a global scale – so next time you die and your brother bite it, we’re going to toss you out into the Empty.”

“And *nothing* comes back from that” *stab*

Leaving it there with Cas - no cutting to him back alive in the bramble patch. Instead the last note, the only one ABOUT the Winchesters in season 13 aside from Dean’s 13x03 speech being used - is Dean saying Sam needs to keep the faith for him, which was the comment only answered in dramatic irony by Cas’s return. No comment on the dominoes of Cas stabbing Billie, getting stabbed himself, going to the Empty, and coming back from that. No comment on the deal. This is all stuff we’re either meant to know already or isn’t strictly relevant right now… But we’ll see :P

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Sort of scared to play the cold open because eye horror in the promo pics and I don’t wanna see the doctor drill some random person of the week through the eyeball :P

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Oh no, it’s kids. I think they’re still alive because of the promo where they refer to talking to some kids. Or one of them with the implication both made it out the house although I assume their time is numbered regardless.

They’re visiting a house which used to be a mental health clinic, which has weird overlap to last episode and the fact the guys went to a fully functioning house with a modern day therapist in it. Mel pointed out the Asylum direct visual reference in one of the props we see in the fast promo so I suppose that’s a good season 1 reference to keep in the back of your head.

The floppy haired kid with the backpack (aka the Jack mirror?) is more uncertain about doing this but encouraged by his friend to go along with it. His friend is a dick.

I hope someone’s had a good look at the stained glass window because I can’t tell if we’ve seen it before or not. This may or may not be set re-use >.>

You can tell the boys apart because one is half battery (the dick) and one has full battery still (our sympathetic guy)

Don’t touch the plague masks!!!!

Literally that was your entire fault and at least the one we were rooting for legged it with a minor wound. I think even some other ghosts were yelling at them for waking up the doctor (I HOPE that’s not a parallel to The Empty and Cas waking him up)

But yet… sam and dean seem to have visited both? Was it only “minor” brain drilling and the other kid comes back home slightly altered? Mel also made promo shot comparisons to Naomi and her drilling… Brrrr.

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Anyway Dean is making himself PB&J so I don’t have time for you all. Ouch.

Did Sam literally just compliment Dean for making himself a sandwich?

is it a recovery sandwich?

I get the feeling if we’re seeing this and the promo was a lil later on and some investigating further into the episode then maybe we’re basically seeing Dean’s breaking point for being babied through his grief by Sam’s attempts to cheer him up.

Makes you wonder why they picked that instead of this, but this could be a relatively dull opener and Sam trying to talk Dean into going to a strip club was too funny to resist, because it kind of was :P

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Sam has been on screen 6 seconds and he’s annoyingly peppy

I love Sam btw, like, you are not allowed to judge me for how I may talk about Sam in the coming stretch of episode because I get the sense he’s in full on cheer up mode, which turns anyone into the most irritating person on the planet and then you throw in Sam’s eyebrows and basically I can’t with him :P It’s not a judgement on his character, I know he’s trying to help Dean because of what Dean told him, but Dean just wants to operate a shell of himself for a while and Sam’s trying to dig him out of it because it’s painful to see him like that and he doesn’t know that Cas is reconnecting with them soon, and if not today then next week and also probably by the second half of the season Mary will be back with them.

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Anyway Dean just carries on stoically making his sandwich and we all talk a lot about the symbolism… I think in this context perhaps it’s loosely linked to Kevin operating as a ghost out of this kitchen after dying halfway through his PB&J and coming back for the crusts as unfinished business. He was mourning his mom while he was alive but then it turned out she was alive but too late he was dead.

The PB&J is also symbolic of humanity so idk. He could just be making it because it’s sweet and he has a sweet tooth, it’s vaguely reminiscent of pie filling but not enough to be traumatic and it’s Dean’s “I’m doing 1 good thing for myself today” personal quiet method of getting better in the long slow aftermath that Sam wants to rush.

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“GET THIS” Sam is on full on Sam-ing

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Awww Jack’s watching DVDs. I assume Sam HAVING a stash of DVDs is stuff he’s collected as an adult with a Bunker to go on a nostalgia kick. I assume they have a PO Box pretty much for Sam’s Amazon deliveries. Like, he hasn’t been lugging DVDs around with him since the start of the show and before that they had a bunch of VHS tapes in the back of the car or something :P They grew up dependant on what was on motel TVs and picked what they liked to come back to as adults with a settled address.

Also: the clouds part and bestow on us: a thing Sam likes!!!! That’s like at least 4 songs, a couple of movies including Star Wars stuff, HP Lovecraft, and now liking old bad fantasy movies that even Dean judges him for.

Or, I assume, Dean has watched and may or may not reference if the opportunity came up but he needs to box something off as Sam’s weird nerd shit that makes him unappealing to the ladies, while Dean, obviously, has never liked anything nerdy, and has had lots of straight edge manly sex with women and all comments about Zorro masks are stricken from the record.

Sam, being in a magnanimous, my brother is grieving, mood, just literally takes the hit and keeps going. Jesus Christ Sammy.  

I would swear he’s worn his worst plaid today just to give Dean something else to judge him for :P

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Oh uh anyway point is Jack is being stashed in the Bunker just like Sam once stashed Cas with his netflix. Sam’s being responsible for the pop culture education of 2 generations. At least Netflix lets you pick whatever you want once Sam’s not trying to be helpful, and in 11x06 Dean related to Cas to switching to bad TV, rather than watching Sam’s picks of the good stuff you’re meant to watch.

Less chance of Jack going on a complete rampage through trash TV, but still if nothing else Dean’s hands-off approach to the kid means that Sam is being allowed to mould him however he likes :P

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I just went back and watched again just because I realised the credits were ALREADY over after 5 names. It was like, J2, Misha (yay!) and 2 people I hadn’t heard of who I assume are too important named characters in this episode to skip but also not reoccurring characters. I wonder what the slippery slope is when you don’t put Lisa Berry’s name in the credits of an episode you’ve advertised she’s in. Even people who’ve checked on TV guides will know… But I guess you treat the episode as internally self-spoiling and ignore what everyone knows for the sake of the person who buys the DVDs and watches through without even reading the descriptions in the sleeve or whatever. Anyway glad she wasn’t spoiled but it does make me like *itchy teeth* about Death being in the recap, because naaah. Naaaaaaah. NAAAAAAAH. they wouldn’t. they’re not. it isn’t. She’s making like, a hallucinatory cameo for theeeemes and I got to stick with that until the episode proves me wrong, never mind bringing Death back :P

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As a fan of Death and the reapers (probably already a band name) I’m like… so on edge right now :P

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Oh wait also Dean said “what about Jack” - he’s using his name even to Sam now. Not teasing him about the anti-christ

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Ya know, based on how beer for breakfast (name of my band) went over and letting Dean be Agent Page (oh the promo is so the breaking point - Dean already is calling him out on all this IN THE TEXT, using his words to point out the weirdness) I am actually thinking that Dean would have actually quite liked to go on another job with Jack. That he was starting to see the use of him and to warm up to him ever so slightly as a person since he showed effort and did a good job and saved Sam and dug the graves for them. I don’t think Dean would ASK out loud but if Sam had said, “Jack comes and that’s final” Dean would have done that face shrug expression and let it happen without much complaint.

Sam is bending to Dean’s apparent desires and being like, well Dean doesn’t like Jack, this could be a chance to get Dean out of the bunker without Jack and let him forget all his troubles for a bit…

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Like, I don’t wanna worry you Sam, but last time you decided you needed to cheer Dean up from his extra super special worries about Cas, you took him out into the woods for a fun werewolf hunt, got shot and strangled and had to kill literally every single werewolf in the episode with your bare hands while bleeding profusely from your stomach, while Dean had a random encounter with Billie in the depths of utter despair that he’d lost everyone he ever loved and the world was now going to end without you all.

Dean’s a drama queen about a lot of stuff but when he tells Jack your plans don’t usually work out, this is the sort of shit he’s referring to :P

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*Sam looks so freakin smug with himself walking off after the badge exchange and Dean’s like… what. What?*

-

Poor kid with his great big bandage on his forehead.

He “can’t even talk” because the trauma was so bad and we cut to him apparently drawing in his room, which makes me think right back to 1x03.

Omg lol of course Dean walks in the door alone to chat to him. And sees him drawing repeatedly the MotW. We bonding over trauma so bad we can’t even talk about it again?

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OH there’s 3 boys. Shaun/Sean (I’m gonna pick Shaun because this is America and I assume you all don’t spell stuff proper - FYI to Americans reading this, please remember to read this all in a shrill British accent, what what) and Evan who was presumably the one who died in the cold open, and Mike is the third, who they’re inseparable from but was NOT there in the house with them that night, and by nightfall at the promo scene they had not spoke to him yet.

What a frikkin rug pull though, to have 2 boys in the open, so you think they’re a duo of best friends, and it’s like NO WAIT THEY COME IN THREES… Bahahahaha

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Dean back upstairs with Shaun, and he’s sat down to talk to him with a “you know” and at this point I am pausing and getting a stuffed toy because he’s either gonna open up to a kid who won’t squeal about it because he can’t talk, or say something completely awful because he’s in an awful place and either way I don’t need Emotional Honesty Hour from Dean Winchester at 9:30 in the morning without a friend :P

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On no, Dean talking about knowing what it’s like to be scared of monsters, but then trying to reassure the kid that he can at least make it go away PHYSICALLY even if the horrific psychological trauma can’t be erased. Comforting!!

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Promo sceeene!

Which we already picked over but aw yeah so Shaun didn’t tell Dean anything after all, except for the plague doctor drawings (and he didn’t show he had the mask with him? Really?? Did he drop it earlier?) so Dean really did just open up to the kid about understanding his pain but being the thing monsters are scared of… A better Dean pep talk than Patience got at least, since Shaun was a regular victim and Patience might have been angling to join the life… and it mostly just served to make him say that :P

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Since I’ve been barrelling through all the Wayward Sisters old episodes this month, I am reminded that I spent a good long while wallowing in Yockey vs Sam knowing Dean’s porn habits and outing them to Jody in 12x06… 

I think Sam trying to make the sacrifice to go to a strip club with Dean (and I can’t believe this is the third time I’m putting myself through watching this exchange because omg second hand awfulness and yet I went back and watched it twice it was so good) probably fits under this characterisation umbrella. 

Of Sam vs performing Dean, as much as the callbacks to season 1 and Dean vs Sam’s Jess grief that I was talking about last night thanks to an anon nudge. And parallels to 12x16 and their chat about the swimming pool outside a similar hotel set (although this one is infinitely lower rate :P) - the writers playing with the knowledge that Sam and Dean have grown up completely latched onto each other like this and Sam’s been dragged to strip clubs by Dean almost certainly and they just kinda know more than they want to about the other’s personal habits, and they have low, bad boundaries. 12x16 was asserting some back, letting them have separate rooms, and showing Sam grossed out by the thought of Dean skinny dipping which, I mean, fair (if you’re Sam anyway :P) but they don’t really GET those boundaries. 

So there’s some re-poking season 12 specific themes here as well, just in that Sam, who has historically had his own walls up about Dean’s porn and interest in strip clubs (because they’re extremely not his thing) is willing to cross a line for Dean and just go with Dean to a strip club and buy him a lap dance from a place with a decent online review. Which also shows low bad boundaries that he would try and manipulate Dean back to happiness this way, just like in 1x19 especially, Sam had to angrily re-assert his boundaries about Dean constantly trying to set him up with Sarah, and Dean had to point out he has a stake in Sam’s sex life too, even if it’s just having to put up with Sam being cranky and miserable. Historically, Sam having to put up with Dean’s sex life is considerably more on the “ugh, TMI” range for him :P

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… sorry, yelling “promo scene!!” usually means I stop analysing for a moment and just watch, because I already went over this ground last night, but I guess there’s more untapped depths :P

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Holy shit, though in the reaction shots for Dean after talking about the Clam Diver, he’s standing with his back to some stuff that on my screen makes a beautiful bi flag. What the hell. I was thinking how colourful the backdrop was last night but…

I mean that’s the blurry background to his close ups on this.

I THINK it’s just the road lit up behind him but oh gosh getting it in the background of the shot for THIS conversation about the Clam Diver? GUYS what are you DOING. 

Who directed this??

I overshot and landed on “how you ever got laid” “heh, tell me about it” I can’t BELIEVE, STILL that Sam just gave him that win. For some reason it reminds me of Swap Meat where he judges Gary for being a virgin based on the Star Wars stuff, even though Sam is an established Star Wars nerd of more than the general audience variety, and mostly likely read the old tie in novels :P Sam owning that his nerdy interests as a teen didn’t exactly make him very sexy is probably the most frank thing he’s ever admitted to Dean and he’s just trying to help Dean. 

(Tbh, again, it may have helped Dean more if Sam just reacted all prickly and got wound up, which is generally what someone teasing wants - a reaction, not rolling over and showing your tummy. Anyway more on the pile of Yockey probing their sex lives in relation to how they see each other, with Sam letting Dean be the one with the more manly sexy interests and letting the performing Dean layer that all comes from win, and then trying to pander to it some more by looking up places to make Dean feel even more manly and in control)

And holy crap I’m glad I have no yoga today because Yockey’s got me talking in loops and I’ve been back to this conversation in the kitchen 3 times and it’s nearly 10am and I’ve made such bad progress. Mental contortions instead :P

Ooooh directed by John Showalter. I’m pretty sure he’s been around for aaaages and contributed more than his fair share of nonsense… :P

I just looked him up on the superwiki, saw he directed the episode with HP Lovecraft (and that ridiculous “I was busy having sex with women” or whatever line about Dean not reading the novels) and basically I am gonna hit the brakes on this thought and just watch the episode or I’m going down a rabbit hole I don’t come back from until 11am :P

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Oh but the thing I was trying to confirm was… Not that I knew I was looking for it except in the most abstract sense that I was thinking of it in one hand and thinking maybe there was something by this director in the other without realising it was the same hand… the blue & red light falling on Dean in 10x16 which looks an awful lot like the bi flag and shortly preceded Dean confessing all that delicious confessional stuff?

Yeah guess which director according to Superwiki.

Now i’m done.

-

I want to know what metric The Clam Diver got “four and a half” of on whatever site Sam was reading about it.

That’s in Sam’s browser history.

-

“Is it my birthday? Did I win a bet that I don’t know about??”

“I’m just trying to be nice.”

“W h y.”

“Because….. you know why.”

“I’m f i n e.”

Sam, back off, he’s gonna stab you :P

-

I got to ask… is the automatic door not working an improv because the door broke, or thematically relevant, because that’s the sort of random thematically relevant detail I could have a nerdgasm about for absolutely hours of typing while Sam is harassing Dean into the building talking about him not believing in anything. The higher powers aren’t doing shit for Dean even when he waves at where he thinks the sensor should be, so he gives up and just opens the damn door himself.

The door has a sticker that says, quite clearly, “warning automatic door” and at the very least for the shortsighted is a great big yellow warning sticker on it, so I’m gonna have to go that they’re signposting that it’s supposed to open, so this is something either scripted or added with full intent to metaphor and my brain hurts.

-

Sam is trying to understand this massive great big VOID of misunderstanding and it’s… frankly awful. He’s babbling about his understanding about Dean and his confusion

“You’re not, Dean. you said you don’t believe in anything, and that’s not true! you-you-you do believe in things, you believe in people, that’s who you *are*, that’s what you DO. I know you’re in a dark place and I just want to *help*”

This is telling us a lot more about how Sam sees Dean than Dean’s faith arc. Of course Dean believes in people and saving people and that the planet is worth saving. That’s a baseline assumption around here. Dean and *faith* though, in believing in things, in how the universe treats them… it doesn’t even open automatic doors for them. Cas is DEAD. Cas is where Dean’s belief arc centred in the last minute of 4x01 and Cas is where it has freakin’ remained for the next 9 years. Cas lost faith in God and Dean chucked away the amulet because he lost faith in everything - Cas and Sam and himself and their ability to save the world that didn’t want to be saved. Cas became God and Dean lost all hope he may have had left. Cas came BACK to Dean and his faith was restored but in THEM. GOD came back and Dean and Cas had similar and unchanging positions on it right down to Chuck basically telling Dean not to confuse him with his own father, but the ridiculous superimposing over John over Chuck and Chuck as Cas’s failed father who Cas now just ignores outright and Dean lashes out on his behalf because he knows Cas doesn’t believe. That Chuck broke Cas back in 5x16 and… Yeah. Cas is gone now and what does Dean even have left in his personal faith? Chuck didn’t answer, the automatic door won’t open even when he waves at it…

Sam sees Dean as having no faith in God (while Sam has had the much more complicated journey there with his personal faith, and feeling it in a religious way) but instead he tries to get a read on Dean’s personal compass, and god dammit Yockey *takes a shot* in Wendigo of course Dean sits down with Sam and tells him HIS personal philosophy on why he does what he does: saving people, hunting things, the family business. The thing is, Dean has already in this episode reached out to Shaun and described himself and Sam as the people who know about the monsters, the ones who can’t erase the trauma but they can erase the monster, and help what little they can there… Save *other people* from it - yeah it’s a message full of regret and defeat that Shaun already got hurt and that’s probably why Dean couldn’t get him to open up because he didn’t come in bubbling with wide-eyed optimism about saving the day, but heavy eyes that had seen this too much. But oh does he still care about the people, and saving them. He just doesn’t trust what HE can do, what they can do against the tide of awful. It’s not in his speech to Patience, because it’s not the motivation to be a superhero any more - he is just a guy doing a job. And he’s lost his heart in many ways. But he will still fight to protect and help people because baseline, Sam is right, that IS Dean and even damaged like this he’ll go on hunts and protect people. Take Jack into the Bunker with them in 13x01 expecting it to be a self-destruct thing where base case scenario they can take Jack out with them or something and contain the blast…

But yeah. 13x04 expressly ended linking Dean’s lack of faith, via dramatic cast-iron irony, to Cas coming back as Dean voices what losing Cas has done to him.

And then Dean gets to say his bit -

“We’ve been down this road before, and I’ve fought my way back and I’ll fight my way back again” which HONESTLY echoes Cas in the Empty telling his depression to stuff it and that he’ll fight and fight for eternity if he has to.

Dean is trying to get better, he made himself a PB&J, he’s just taking this all at his own pace, and Sam’s starting to smother him.

-

“How?”

“Same way I always do: bullets, bacon and booze.” Dean regrets his no bumper sticker policy because that and the “whole bottle of Jack” comment from last episode are both iconic Dean talking about his coping methods out loud way.

Also throws back to 10x11 and how Dean did that list of 3 things which he was getting back to when he lost the Mark and left a blank space which should have been “babes” or something and just put more booze into it. The swap of sex for food happens a LOT with Dean. For some reason the Dean vs cake explanation I wrote recently was floating around tumblr again last night, in which the middle of season 10 conveyed clearly that cake was stuff Dean hadn’t tried yet (and 10x16’s confession tied it all together - we’re really delving deep into the stuff that was explored back then and I’ve thankfully been in fandom for so have the language down really well but I hope I don’t have to explain this entire complicated web over and over later :P) and pie was coping methods heterosexual sex with women - tying what Dean wanted in 10x07 in the hook up he didn’t get, to pie in 10x13 via that gross dating app… All this with the cake, croissookies, and that comment in 10x11 where Dean was trying to detox and eating egg white omlettes (hi 12x18) and cutting out booze.

And, of course, there’s the whole bacon = bisexual experimentation thing from 8x13, 9x13, 11x21, and I guess now :P Cass had a much more thorough bacon masterpost somewhere out there which I may have to dig out and reblog with a knowing look…

-

And Dean slams his hand down on the bell to punctuate this statement and hopefully bring an end to the conversation by summoning a hotel receptionist.

-

Cue screaming kid having nightmares about what he’s seen.

His mom kisses him on his forehead where the doctor drilled him, and leaves the door open so she can be concerned about him.

Oh no, his backpack DOES have the mask in it. Dr Monsterface used it to get to him :<

(Oh wait hi yes that thing Jody said about the Dr Sexy leviathan in 7x02 is still fresh in my mind. Leviathans as a depression metaphor in a way The Empty rapidly escalated.)

-

I saw/maybe reblogged a post about how Jack might have Kelly used against him and 13x04 was the nice version, but he’s going around carrying his grief about her in a backpack. We have to hope like hell Mia gave him catharsis enough or he might carry that grief with him and things can use her image to get into his head.

(That and the 2x “shoot him!” order about Dean from Miriam and Buddy to the sheriff and Mia, 2 people who wanted to help, are causing foreshadowing concerns)

-

I love the cuts between the doctor coming for Shaun, though - the bell ending one conversation to Shaun waking up screaming, and then he gets up and pretty much goes to confront the doctor head on rather than cower - but cut to an empty bed.

-

Dean’s empty bed, but he seems to have left the keys?

-

Ah, he went and had some, uh, catharsis somewhere. I swear to god those are probably the sunglasses from 1x19 dug up again and stuck on his head just to haunt Sam.

-

The fact his tie is tied around his head makes me feel like he was probably blindfolded at some point in all that… Hehehe. I doubt his tie is tied so nicely around his head with a pretty bow because he did it to look cool :P It would just be the same knot but on his head in that way.

-

Sam’s like “oh great” but doesn’t kick Dean awake? Like on a normal day when dumping a glass of water on his face and telling him to suck it up would be the correct thing, Sam’s like, “Sam’s got this!” goes and gets dressed, takes the keys, and leaves Dean passed out on the floor. In 1x19 he hit the horn to wake Dean up because serves you right.

-

(if he only went to a strip club he may have just made off with someone’s underwear thrown on him for being a good tipper rather than actually having sex with anyone… I kinda doubt if he was THAT drunk he’d be more than a very generous customer they don’t mind kicking him out at closing with a bra still on his head :P)

(I’m gonna assume Dean did not actually have sex but just went out and had some very drunk miserable fun and made a friend last night and now he’s gonna be dependant on Sam for cash for a while until he can scrounge some back up :P)

Also, um, what is he holding when he rolls over? Is that a fun kinky times toy whip? Exactly what sort of place did he find last night, and please, for the love of god, tell me it was not the place Sam was diligently reading the reviews for between his fingers yesterday, apparently.

-

Listen say whatever you want about the fact he walked home holding it, if that boy had his tie tied around his eyes he was not the one holding it while he was having fun :P

-

I like Mike. He’s a burly farm worker hefting hay outdoors in the sun, which makes him like 3 different directions of Cas parallel (the strong one in the dynamic, sun, hay), and also he was sensible enough not to be running around in a haunted house for youtube hits.

…

Look, at some point Cas hefted a bunch of hay out of the back of his truck and onto the side of the road and that happened in canon and no one ever mentioned it

thank you Yockey for acknowledging off-screen hay hefting.

-

Aw no he’s lying because he’s scared and Sam makes him tell the truth and it’s that he WAS scared and he thinks not going to the house was cowardly, but now his friends are missing and hurt (so far as they know because Shaun getting killed overnight might not have made it to them yet)… He does tell the truth in the end. He’s also in DEEP denial about their deaths.

-

Is that enough bacon, Dean.

-

No, no it is not.

-

Sam, you’re gonna kill him if you give him more beer right now. Is he smuggling local ales to Dean?

I don’t think I can actually watch Dean eat this entire pile of bacon with Dean’s bad mood eating habits. This pause is just to procrastinate dealing with that.

-

Wait also the friend is called “Mike” which, uh… Michael? is a thing we should be more worried about? What happened to that guy anyway?

-

Man, we’re 16 minutes in and where’s Billie?

-

I feel like Dean being hung over for the rest of this case is probably not going to help with him getting caught and threatened with a drill by a regular old ghostie.

-

I’m snooping Sam’s tablet before he delivers the cliff notes exposition, and aside from the creepy images at the top, including an old school newspaper article in the top image results that is illegibly small, but seems to have photos of the doc alive, the first and only legible article mentions a woman with depression who goes to the doc because she had depression because her son drowned… Which makes 2 son drowning deaths in 2 episodes, with the kid in 13x04 who killed his mom in the car. Also reminds me of 7x14 where when Dean confronts the guy behind all the nightmares, it’s because his little brother drowned in the sea and he could never let go of that guilt. 

I think drowning is the metaphor for depression here - people losing a part of themselves metaphoric to small son, who is overwhelmed in the water… Dean related to that loss and used it against the Plucky’s guy, and that was in the slight turn around section of season 7 - the part where he began confronting the loss of Cas through mirrors because of course Cas was coming back. In season 13 the plan has been set in stone and can be done briefly and with HEAVY dramatic irony that we’re all aware of because we only actually have 1 episode without Cas so far, even if 1 was his death and one was his waking up, he’s surrounding Dean’s grief in a layer of dramatic irony. Dean may be overwhelmed and drowning. We may have SEEN the memory of Cas drowning in the Empty, but it’s all done with dramatic irony, that Cas is not lost to Dean but presumably finding his way back.

-

Dean had better not puke at the grieving mother’s house after all that bacon and beer for breakfast after a hard night out.

-

I love the cut between Sam asking what happened in one scene and the woman saying “I don’t know” in the next - there’s some good thematic transitions I’ve noticed already, especially this way of skipping exposition here, but I liked Dean ringing the bell for the hotel and Shaun waking up screaming, because Dean was about to go out on his grief metaphor night out and for all I know get the sexy kind of drilled while Shaun was getting the unsexy kind… and then the cut to Dean’s empty bed, because this is how bad his grief was hurting him.

(Also after Sam tried to control and placate Dean’s grief, he resisted Sam’s attempts to smother him but he still has been accepting the offers, and did eventually go out and get wasted and Sam had encouraged it - just Dean did it on his terms and without Sam, just his tacit approval that Sam wouldn’t bitch about it.)

-

ALSO WOW AFTER 13 YEARS YOCKEY FINDS A WAY TO SUBTLY WORK IN THE COLD SPOTS FOR GHOSTS.

-

LOOK HOW INTELLIGENT THAT MAKES OUR BOYS LOOK WHEN THEY READ THE SUBTEXT OF A SCENE FROM A SURFACE READ OF SOMEONE WHO DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT GHOSTS BUT IDENTIFIED THE SIGNS AND THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW WHAT TO LOOK FOR COULD UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING WITHOUT HER SAYING IT AND NOW THEY KNOW EVERYTHING JUST FROM INFERRING IT

WOW

-

Night time and they go to the house and we’re at 18 minutes in. I mean we have time for a jump scare, some bad shit to happen, and then the ad break before pt.2 of the episode.

-

Buzz buzz

-

“What’s up, doc?”

-

*ad break*

*back to Dean getting drilled*

-

Sam saves him and on with pt.2 of the episode.

-

All the masks are back in place.

-

Oops, don’t touch the masks. *horrible screaming from elsewhere in the house*

-

Well, except to burn them. Sensible to stay in the room, defend their turf, and get to the burning asap instead of poking around or investigating the screaming any more. 13 years and they have learned a fair amount about ghosts and I am admiring how competent they are. Sam especially has the lead here, probs because Dean is off his game by an enormous degree to him.

-

Ahahah and Sam did a round circle at the door so we see the doc get partway through the door, realise there’s salt, and have to awkwardly back out of it to have a second go and honestly that is the funniest shit a ghost has ever done on this show even though it’s also terrifying :P

-

*burn burn burn*

-

So rescue Shaun?

-

What can possibly happen next with nearly 20 minutes left

-

LIGHTS BLOWING DOWN A HALLL

-

Now they dealt with the advertised ghost I’m just waiting for Billie to show up, because they’re about to be mobbed by a ton of ghosts and she can save their asses, or else… well idk I have to watch, but I’m just laughing because of lights blowing down a hall - 3 times already this season, for Jack, for Patience at least with them flickering rather than exploding like this…

-

These are all the whispers about the doctor which we heard in the cold open

-

I love the Winchesters running around shouting sensible ideas about what the ghosts are doing though.

-

Is this going to be Dean’s torch everything solution?

-

YIKES, no, it’s 4x15/11x17. BAD IDEA, DEAN. i can’t believe he even carries a pre-prepared take me to the veil kit. Like, that’s the reckless nothing to live for might as well die trying to do something dramatic toolkit. We also get shades of 11x16 with him doing that in a super haunted house.

You can NOT pass into the veil in a super haunted house with just your brother to watch over you and stop these 1000s of ghosts killing you.

Jesus Christ Dean.

-

Wait is he literally doing this

-

Sam is like FFUCKING HELL RIGHT HERE WITHOUT EVEN A SALT RING? ON THE FUCKING STAIRS UNDER THIS SYMBOLIC STAINED GLASS WINDOW THAT LIZZY DIDN’T ANALYSE EARLIER?

DEAAAAN

-

And yeah this is 2x01 all over again with Dean walking down the stairs trying to get the attention of a ghost.

-

Wait back up new reaper with a customer service calm grief counsellor voice, but what did she say her name was? :P

“Hello, my name is JESSICA and I’m here to lead you to your next life”

… well I hope she survives the episode just because I always root for the reapers and she’s clearly just a random obstacle to Dean who is doing her job, a regular old part of the natural order, but that is not a name you use at random :P

-

I’m just sitting here running my hands through my hair trying to deal with this right now. Gonna play a few rounds of Pokemon shuffle because I sort of knew this was coming since they showed 5x15 and 2x01 in the opening recap, but the way Dean did it and then walking immediately into a Jessica? Yeah I need a mo.

-

Dean maybe never told Sam what he did in 11x17 because he didn’t at the end of the episode and idk if that’s one of those things you don’t just bring up at the breakfast table.

-

JESSICA.

-

“Hi, I’m the spectre of the loss of the most important romantically loved loved one in your life, do you feel like moving on from them to the next thing”

“sorry I can’t come to the phone”

-

YOCKEY I AM DISTRESSED.

-

Accidents don’t happen accidentally.

-

“Oh god.”

She knows what she’s got herself into.

-

Sam takes 20 seconds to set his waych and sdakdfjgkl hang on who cares about Sam

WE’RE IN REAPER HQ

-

“Dean Winchester is the the veil!”

Please say this whole thing goes to red alert.

-

Where’s his file. It it like 5000 times the size of all these little ones?

-

Sam put down enough salt for Dean but not himself.

-

I don’t think that’s ghosts blowing lights any more, I think that’s emergency lightning from the cosmos.

-

SHAUN! Oh no, you’re dead :(

-

At least he’s talking again.

-

Generally the freshest ghosts are the more talkative ones, and as Bobby showed us back in 7x19 which I generally try not to remember or rely on for ghost lore, because the older ones are fading and falling into patterns and the fresher ones still have a stronger sense of self and their old life.

-

OH NO Shaun got possessed because of course that’s how he got back here with the mask. I think we saw a smaller ghost in a t-shirt in some of the promo stuff, but I thought it was a kid, not a teenager.

-

“I miss my mom” he’s on the other side of the grief from Jack, who misses his mom because he’s alive and she’s dead. The doc said he’d feel better and he froze and let him kill him. Also Kevin parallels just of a kid whose most important relationship is his mom and now he’s dead.

-

Dean’s thinking clearly for the first time in a while because he’s not in his body. All soaked in alcohol and grief. He realises he let Shaun down by not being there to protect him. Which may have all happened this way in another episode, but that PB&J, man. It was a Kevin thing all along. (I SAID it was a Kevin thing and you all were like blah blah Cas blah blah Jack, look, don’t doubt me on my Kevin knowledge, guys, I am still RAW about his death and it was 4 years ago :P) Dean’s remembering in the middle of grief that it’s “saving people hunting things” after he let Patience down with that speech. Or so I hope. They used Dean’s speech over the open of the episode like in a season 1 episode they’d usually layer the more optimistic and simplistic “saving people hunting things” from Dean’s like, second day on the job, not where he’s all messed up and old.

Anyway Shaun is an emergency Kevin patched into his life to make him feel bad about failing people, and I guess that puts Dean at similar crossroads to the middle of season 9. Hopefully to a different end, just like this should be subverting 11x17 for why he just abruptly decided to cross into the veil, because Jessica is not having a good day :P

-

DEAN GOING INTO THE VEIL TO HELP LOST PEOPLE is doubling up the job of a reaper. Reapers CAN’T COMMUNICATE across the veil to the living, and don’t wanna solve the cases. They come to move on the one person with a ticket upstairs in a house full of hundreds of ghosts and just ignore them… Dean actively dives into their turf to solve the case and find out how to move the souls on. He SAYS he wants to help move the souls on.

I have such a huge love of Dean blurring the lines with being Death, and being a reaper. It’s just such a symbolic thing. Their job is moving people on, basically handing souls to the reapers to carry on the job, when it’s ghost cases. They’re the human agents of the reapers breaking the ties that hold ghosts to the earth so that the whole process can carry on and the world doesn’t fill up with ghosts - like it did when the veil was broken. (or is it still? Again, the whole Kevin thing not quiiiite answered, although maybe/maybe not that was a sign Chuck was fixing the thing… But then there were a whole bunch of souls Billie for for them out of the veil like 2 episodes later…)

-

Reaper lore is fucked up on this show :P But Reaper HQ just in the first glimpse looked aaaawfuully empty adjacent…

-

I’m guessing even though Dean’s got back with the info he needs, and Sam’s about to wake him up because the clock ran out, the reapers are going to intervene…

-

WAKEY WAKEY DEAN

-

Oh look Billie’s back.

“Hey Dean”

-

I haven’t been this happy in about 1000 years. Like seriously Cas getting back was great and all but HOLY SHIT have you seen Billie? I would set this as my desktop immediately but my mum and Cat are both gonna have to watch this episode with me and probably see my desktop in the process, so… Saving a screencap for later ;)

-

This is literally the best thing.

LOOK AT HER.

LOOK AT THAT SCYTHE. HOLY SHIIIT THAT SCYTHE.

-

Billie’s understated attitude is just *clenches fist*

She just shows up!! LOoking LIKE THIS!!!!

I don’t even wanna hit play, I don’t wanna move past this point, I just want to bask in this one image forever.

-

THE COAT. NO one has shown up in a floor length leather coat in the entire show so far, because no one has been good enough for it.

-

“We need to talk” Yeah no shit babe.

-

LOL getting right to it - Dean like, Cas killed you. Billie like, “how’s that working out for him?” - does she know? Either way, she’s rubbing it in. Because of course she has eeeevery right to be pissed. :P

-

UTTER GLEE.

-

I have a sudden feeling… Billie says, “certain rules - after you kill one "incarnation” of Death" (Hey 1000 points to trisscar) “another one takes its place” and dude.

Death died and within 10 seconds Billie was singing “o Death” and following the Winchesters around, annoying them, making deals with them, making ultimatums with them… Like, the reapers aren’t exactly itching to kill EACH OTHER and promote someone, and I guess just one biting the bullet and taking one for the team doesn’t work… But this suddenly explains EVERYTHING about Billie getting all up in the business of the people who basically fuck up every deal and ally they make and hanging out with them… doesn’t give you much of a life span.

Back in 12x06, Billie taunted Dean, made fun of him for not getting what he wants, and said she wanted something from him. Came to Mary and said she was there to reap her when she was ready. She LET Dean make another deal, a deal where one of his family would have to die, or he himself do it. In a car full of Winchesters, one of them is gonna take one for the team, or ruin everything and kill the reaper who’s been bothering them, holds so much over them…

-

I’m thinking very hard about changes of state right now - that Billie and Cas had mirrored deaths, and Billie came back improved, and Cas… Well, we don’t know how he came back except he’s been put on a better path, for his character narrative, in confronting and overcoming the symbolic depression, and he has a better coat. Not much to go on yet, and I haven’t been participating in the wild flailing about all the ways he MAY have come back different, but this makes a veeery interesting mirror about returns and changes of state, upgrades after death. Now I’m interested in what may have happened to Cas.

-

But, like, to a magnitude of difference to how utterly delighted I am that Billie won the game :P

-

But yeah this is a bit of a lore fudge but who caaaares because it brings Billie back and powers her up and makes her into THE BEST CHARACTER ON THE SHOW IN A TOTALLY INARGUABLE WAY.

-

I love her new ring :P

-

“This universe can be so many things, and sometimes it is poetic.”

Hell yeah it is Billie. I’ve been saying so for ages, but this really puts it in such a beautiful way. This is Dabb’s entire job. He makes this universe *rhyme* with itself. This is what his mirrors and parallels and character repeats have been doing. I even compared scene transitions in 13x03 to the way poetry ends each line in a verse. It’s something all the writers have been doing - making the story rhyme.

Gaaaaah. THIS is Dabb’s writer meta commentary, perhaps. I think I can trust Yockey to spell it out this way :D

-

She took him to Reaper HQ!!! Like Cas he’s passing through states - I assume he’ll be back in time to finish the hunt, but in the mean time… He’s got to work through some shit, just like Cas did last episode. Rhyming with each other.

-

Dean is wearing a black and grey plaid with thin red lines, and a black jacket. He’s bringing like the only colour here to all the blackness.

-

yeah, Billie, keep the scythe away from him.

-

I love she set her desk up in the W section because even though it’s not the middle of the alphabet, she’s keeping a CLOSE FREAKING EYE on the Winchesters.

-

Ooh she knows Dean went to the AU… She’s interested in Jack. Dean’s chance to protect him!!!???

-

Billie looks INCREDIBLE how did I ever let myself talk myself into doubting she was here to run the game?

wait shit Dean’s doing epic character stuff. Not bargaining with his life, or asking for Mary or Cas back. He just wants to complete the job and free the ghosts because freakin sshdfkjsjlks PB&J brought him back to his senses and he needs to save Kevin-stand-in rather than let him wallow in the veil for 3 seasons again

THAT is one heck of a thing, Dean. I love you so much

not as much as billie but it was a beautiful character moment

-

Billie is STUNNED.

-

Jessica gets to take all the ghosts back. She thought this was going to be a terrible day and it actually worked out.

Again, with like 10 minutes left of the episode so this isn’t how it ends.

-

Now Dean’s talking about trust, and Billie brings up how they keep breaking cosmic bargains. I think he may be stalling - even planning to NOT give up Jack even though Billie went first… Or he’s gonna tell her but… Natural order? She can’t just go… kill him…

If Dean’s still uncertain about Jack he could always make a query about IF she could kill him, but not give away enough, or have her as the weapon in his back pocket should Jack be a problem… something for him to regret later, maybe?

-

This is stressful

-

Dean spills. “Lucifer’s son. Jack. When he was born it created a little rip.”

-

What does Billie know about the AU?

Well she knows how the multiverse works, and she knows a “big dumb Winchester” is fairly statistically likely to be the one to knock it all down.

The warning not to try and get Mary back? Now Cas is back? The consequences may still be on Mary, however she’s returned to them, intentionally or not, she could topple it?

Ugh I hate spec but all these lines are so leading :P The comment that Sam’s plans don’t work out, in this light, for example, is realllly nerve-wracking. And we know from spoilers the AU is going to become a more immediate problem at some point…

-

“That does sound like us.”

-

“You’ve changed.” Billie reading Dean deeply and now we get to the character part of this where she’s just… analysing him.

“The Dean I know and love” look I’m die hard Destiel to the bone but Dean x Death is something I’ve always thought the dynamic for was absolutely stunning since their first meeting, and I hate to say it but making Death into Billie is making it aaawfully tempting to ship :P

Please show him his massive folders.

-

She’s currently just calling him out on how bad he feels. Pure awful character exposition.

-

“I don’t matter.” OH DEAN NO.

He and Cas totally rhyming with each other about their passing through these dark other worlds…

Dean couldn’t save mom, he couldn’t save Cas, he can’t even save this kid… But he already saved the kid with that bargain with Billie, and Cas is… out there somewhere. And Mary is a whole other problem and the one he can’t solve right now. If she’s alive, she’s on the other side of a wobbling house of cards he can’t touch. But the difference in the way he gets finality on Mary vs the finality on Cas? 13x01 vs this episode as Dean slides from dealing with Cas to dealing with Mary? Getting this blunt exposition from Billie about it…

I think Billie would have thought it was funny to show Dean his file, but then realised because he’s changed she needs a different approach to intimidate and interrogate him. She sees that he doesn’t feel like a hero any more, not the guy who saves the world. All his crushing losses have made him feel like he’s still utterly helpless to make anything good happen in his own life.

And Dean can’t work through it, won’t work through it, and he knows it - this is the thing that has broken him hardest… That at this point there will be NO recovery except the story handing back Cas to him, and even then that’s one hell of a shake to what he believes he can accomplish… If they wanted to scare him back down from “i kill gods” Dean who then went and killed Death too, to show him the universe his huge, and keeps on ticking and his actions have put Billie in charge and the natural order keeps on ticking… But he still can’t get mom and Cas back…

-

I am literally sitting in that room in Alice in Wonderland where she’s floating around on her tears.

I mean in my head, anyway :P

-

My heart is broken.

Billie’s “don’t you?” though when Dean says he doesn’t matter… I wonder what she knows that Dean doesn’t :P

But Dean starts ranting to her about how Sam’s been trying to help and he’s useless… :(

“You really believe that. You want to die.” Well, yeah the universe has become a crushing hard place where no one makes sense and Dean doesn’t even believe in the blaze of glory death, doing something HEROIC now, let alone not believing in it because he thinks he deserves better and a happy ending at the end of this all…

Lowest point, unlocked! \o/

-

Oh, ALL those notebooks are his individual deaths… How he dies. “heart attack. burned by a red-haired witch” HEY ROWENA

Are they potential deaths or ones still looming over him, disappearing as he passes those marks? Or are they his entire history of deaths not died?

-

“Unfortunately, none of these books say you die today”

….

So are they potential future deaths or what?

-

I mean, Billie just introduced hope to his life.

-

“I stand witness to a much larger picture” they could not have picked a better character to be Death. She has such DEPTH and WEIGHT to the way she speaks, and such an amazing calm, powerful aura of energy. I just love her so so much.

-

OH GOSH this camera angle with the scythe in the background behind Dean’s face… Gotta save and remember to add that to this, because after telling him all the ways he dies, Billie moves onto his big picture cosmic weight. That he’s important. And Dean has the scythe symbolically pointing at him as she talks, telling him he’s at those crossroads of life and death but not today… Is this going to be a burden like the one Chuck laid on him, or Billie reminding him that a heroic life is not such a bad thing?

I really think this is one of the best episodes of the show and I got a few minutes left of it and don’t know how this resolves :P

-

SHE IS LITERALLY giving him the 4x01 Cas speech - “you have work to do” and telling him he’s important, telling him he deserves to live… Kinda still like I hate you but you’re important, and setting aside past grudges. There’s more for him to do.

-

“And trust me, having my eyes opened to the importance of any humans, especially Winchesters, is not a thrill.” HA. yeah, she’s an anti-Cas but she and Cas are literally bouncing off each other in the story anyway since he stabbed her and then got stabbed himself in turn.

Rhymes. Rules. Reason. Billie is the best character on the show and I love her.

-

“So, you wanna die, but I say, keep living.”  
“Hmm.”

This is NOT the same as what happened with Cas - but he may not remember it - but it works in sort of mirrored ways. Cas utterly defeats the Empty with his will to live, may not remember it, and may have to piece his newfound will to live together himself in this new hopeful return to life. I hope. Dean has no will to live, and orders of work and purpose are just the way his life goes, the orders endlessly being placed on his head by every cosmically powerful figure… God, Death that time in 6x11, Billie now, JOHN every day of his life from aged 4 to 27 and then one final order to haunt Dean to his first grave…

-

“I need to know. My mom” *wakey wakey*

Oh, and there’s the so far missing hope. She can’t lie to him and say Mary’s dead, so she cuts him off in indecision and uncertainty, and THAT, unfortunately, is a massive step  up from where he was in total despair that there is no one he can save…

And Cas may very well be back in his life to give him the hope that it can be done again by the end of this episode… Aaaaaaaaaaaah.

-

Anyway Dean goes wakey wakey at last and the house seems to be wrapped up, yay.

-

there’s exactly 5 minutes left, which is always the omen. :P

-

Sam comforts Shaun’s mom, and wanders through the scene, looking small in the chaos, to rejoin Dean at the car.

-

And like in 11x17 Dean lies again.

Sam is too smart for that, chases it up when Dean tries to brush it off as luck, and says that when Dean says they talk about it later, it means they won’t talk about it and it’s Dean’s way of shutting off a conversation from ever happening…

Sam calling out their communication issues? I am LIVING

-

Dean glances at the mom, and is reminded that they do this job for a reason, that he bargained to save the souls of the children… Sold out the info about Jack for it…

“I saw Death. The Death.”

*Sam does the eyebrows*

“He’s dead”

“No she’s not”

*EYEBROWS*

“it’s billie”

And Dean goes on to even say that she wanted intel, and does Sam pick up on it?

… no he doesn’t. He doens’t ask or guess what it was…

Dean repeats the line about work to do, which is also, especially in the context of Sam and Dean talking, what they say in instances like for example 2x22 when Dean had just sold his soul for Sam, when they’re about to go back to work with their regular job. The open the trunk of the car and look at their gear and announce they’re going to go kick ass phrase. (Which, of course, in 4x01, Cas was subverting the context by saying it to Dean away from Sam, putting the burden on him - Billie at least made it about Sam and Dean both but that she was talking to Dean)

But they’re sitting on the back of the car, keeping the trunk closed… Not moving on

And Dean starts talking about how he’s not okay.

And how he always believed in what they did - saving people hunting things - that losing John or Bobby or people they cared about was a hit he could take for the higher purpose. Billie has just REMINDED him that he is bound to a higher purpose. But he’s so lost, and he’s lost people who he CAN’T lose. Mary and Cas at once is just TOO MUCH. It makes the universe cruel not poetic…

(I say, having it paused here but knowing Misha’s in the credits again as an awful TEASE :P)

He just needs a WIN.

And he may just get one because he told 90% of the truth to Sam, conveyed exactly what was going on behind that line about not believing in anything from last episode, the power of which narratively brought back Cas because that was a huge step in his grief arc, to admit it. Now he’s explaining it, telling Sam how badly it’s all got to him…

Oh god where is Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas.

They’re driving off and there’s music, which… agh.

-

drive drive drive sexy car

-

Omg we’re going back to the house… More grief on the mom for her son… Just really WALLOWING in how much loss hurts everyone, and even when the soul has moved on, that Dean got a win for their knowledge of the afterlife, that they know ghosts can go to a better place, the mom doesn’t, she has lost Shaun and that’s it for her. No closure, just pain.

-

drive drive drive

Billie reading Dean’s book

-

I think Billie really has a huge interest in Dean… :P

-

drive drive drive… Okay so Yockey is the new Robbie montage guy.

-

Also Sam is asleep while Dean drives - this seems to parallel 12x20 where he was asleep and Dean checked his messages from Mary…

-

Bring bring?

-

BRING BRING.

Called that like a boss :3

-

WHAT, NO “HELLO DEAN” ON THE PHONE?

FUCK YOU YOCKEY I TAKE IT ALL BACK I HATE THIS ENTIRE EPISODE

-

I mean there probably was one under the music if that was Cas…

-

Well this alley has that cross from 11x06, aka the start of Cas’s depression arc, the one where Metatron was teasing him about a real life angel on camera…

-

drive drive drive

-

Cross reflected in the car

-

Hey, bison sign

-

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

-

Has he just been waiting at that phonebox for hours.

-

I’ll just wait here then… I’ll wait for you…

Well that got fucking tied up with a fucking bow, from all the left over crap Robbie left lying around.

-

God I don’t even have anything to say… Cas waited. For Dean. Like the love ballad warned he would. Because he’s Dean’s real life angel, and Dean’s win. It was FOR Dean. Dean’s arc narratively brought Cas back into his life, but on Cas’s side of the story they fully fleshed out the end of his depression arc and made Cas bring himself back on his own terms so it doesn’t shove Cas into a subheading for Dean even when the bigger story is handing Cas on a plate back to Dean…

And that, my friends, was one hell of a fun game :P


	6. 13x06

There are 3 distinct sections: Before Yoga, After Yoga, and Killer Migraine, so um. Apologies for the sliding scale of meta quality, pls finish all my thoughts for me if you want to. :D

I’m not going to proofread either, sorry, and I know I mistyped Jack as Kevin like at least 3 times, and wrote “Cas” every other line when a word began with C for no reason except I was thinking about him.

I shouldn’t start watching

I shouldn’t. It’s 7:30, I take forever, and I’m all bundled up in bed but need to be going soon

I shoooouldn’t…

-

Expectations: this is not going to be nearly as fun as advertised but the hats are going to be the absolute fucking highlight of probably sticking out all content since 6x18 and all future canon unless this happens again.

-

LOL the recap immediately starts about how Jack can’t control his powers… I wooonder.

It side by sides Sam and Dean’s side of the argument, and answers with Jack saying “I’m sorry”, but that continues to be as difficult an issue as it was to start with - he can feel real compassion but all that does is mess him up about the fact he can’t control his powers. Or, of course, they tease that he was evil all along again but the whole nougat incident was pretty firmly used to establish he doesn’t default to evil from birth.

Then, ouch, blindsided by a zombie recap (Jody’s sonnnnn) which makes you think it might be about the motw, but then turns out to be about Cas coming back and Jack’s confusion about it. This recap is deeply in his POV which makes me very curious about the episode and I might have to try watching it in his POV

Anyway loving (ouch) the clarification that “what gets burned, stays dead” over Cas - not like it wasn’t obvious already but that was conveyed entirely through dramatic irony and scene changes, whereas now laying the text over Cas’s death and Dean saying “goodbye Cas” makes it extremely clear that this is what was haunting Dean in 3x04, because it REALLY doesn’t hurt to re-emphasise when Dean’s messed up about Cas clearly and textually :P

Not like they could do much different with it, being there’s no dialogue, but recapping Cas’s ressurection was pretty ridic as well because they used building sad-important music over it and led from a harmless recap about the Empty to Cas coming back to life with the music already there and then cut to Dean on the phone and to Cas there in the alley, with the music building up to its conclusion… Gyah. Probably the only time they’ll recap that fully, as I suppose all future Cas recaps will just start with either the bramble patch thing or the turning around thing but then move on hastily to whatever Cas does when he’s alive that is more urgent to tell us about.

-

Can I just say, the entire summer was an utter nightmare of headaches about what has happened to Cas with everyone staking a claim on him in ways I’ve never really encountered before. Trying to just wait to see what the show will give us about Cas and if it will or won’t confirm my initial readings but under the *absolutely no pressure about being wrong* that if you read these notes a lot you’ll know I give myself in spades… I actually feel pretty tense and horrible about him coming back to life and interacting with the Winchesters again because he became such a tug of war topic. And even if I’m chill about whatever happens with him, I just fear that everyone else is going to be up in arms about one thing or another. It’s made me feel really unenthusiastic and sick about having Cas back and utterly paralysed to talk about him except in jokes or analysing waaay back, because pretty much everything about him has become so contested, so I hope whatever happens with him in this episode it’s vague enough not to crush anyone but firm enough to give us a clear path to understanding him again.

The hogwarts house poll from the other week just confirmed to me that *no one* understands Cas and that’s myself included. He’s so multi-layered and given this and that motivation and personality by the narrative depending on the year or week or hour that I think by default we fall into a groove with some version of him that’s rung closest to our hearts or some lasting impression, but he’s too big a character to pin down (literally? he’s massive? :P) and so opinion about Cas is utterly divided. We can’t even sort him in a hogwarts house.

I have stuff I’d LIKE to see and storylines I’d LIKE to see followed up on and hunches I’d LIKE confirmed and readings that SEEM fairly surface level explanatory until someone randomly creates a mountain over an opposing idea and turns it into a fight (and I hate that I unfairly became the symbol of like… the Establishment meta community for my opinions from that ridiculous vagueblogger who thought I could illuminati the fandom), but it seems to be on Cas where everyone has absolutely iron opinions and everything I’ve seen people say about things they want when he comes back have been stated in such terrifyingly absolute terms.

So, um, that’s something I haven’t said all summer but should probably be on the table, that I literally do not like Cas any more in the way fandom talks about him after I kept getting dragged into wank when I just wanted to tend my own garden of Cas analysis and I’ve been cradling a precious little nugget of “just rewatch old episodes he’s in and enjoy him on screen” all to myself, and I don’t like giving that up and wading back into Public Property Castiel who just gives me a migraine >.>

-

OH NO Dean is in the cold open, which means this is going to be Awful™ and then we’ll zoom back a few days to the start again.

I am just gonna assume right away this is the stabbing by a ghoul that Billie mentioned, and things are In Motion for Dean now.

Also I think this is the cemetary from 8x06?

-

Huh, no, just something horrible happening to the cop he had on the case with him. But no blood splatter! I will live in hope. I saw someone identify him from the promo pics that he’s a pedigree actor with actual Western creds so that must have been fun for Jensen :P The “aw hell” when Dean loses him feels like a Ranger Rick level of bonding *at least* that Dean’s got fond of the guy.

I wonder if they’re just teasing us now. There must be something about this case which makes it suck to show on screen as just an aside, of some person being eaten by some monster as per the usual cold open, because all we’ve got right now is someone Dean seemed to care about being snatched from underneath him as soon as he turns his back, which is pretty much how my speculation for Cas and/or Jack this episode goes, since I have to assume the worst about Cas being spirited away/doing the spiriting away.

Perhaps the cold open reflecting Dean’s metaphorical mental state is the new horror :P

-

48 HOURS EARLIER: the music starts back up again

-

Hi Cas!

-

Sam just in general is not equipped to get Cas back, I think, just because he’s never been keyed into him in that way. Dean *gets* it and Cas is like, red string of fate connected to him, however you view their relationship, they’re an Item in some cosmic way. Dean’s somehow ready to accept Cas is back because he’s come back before… But to Sam, who just has not been a part of this whole epic story in the same way, doesn’t feel the *rightness* of this, has a clearer mind to ask questions, critical questions of the situation that Cas returned in, and may be better equipped to handle it if/when things start to stink about Cas’s return (not necessarily in stuff happening TO Cas but because of it) and to him Cas is dear and close but I mean… as much as they see others after their death fairly often… Cas is returning to them fortuitously waaay too often and Sam has to be objective about it when Dean won’t. Sam’s initial exchange with Cas immediately sets the tone of Sam’s disbelief and just not quite getting the emotional resonance of Cas coming back. Sure it’s GREAT and all and he is so not complaining and would be delighted to have Cas back… but why is it always Cas and from such improbable odds?

Look, I’m gonna invoke the 8x08 angst I rarely talk about and think about a lot, but I get the feeling other parts of that episode may be relevant around here, since it’s a Cas comes back and they work a case to get back in the swing of things episode. In season 8 Sam reacts very oddly to Cas being back, maybe not initially, when Dean is the one questioning it in 8x07 because he can’t believe Cas would just come back to him after what he thinks he saw, but in 8x08 there’s that moment in the open where Cas is denied shotgun, by both brothers, but Dean’s got one set of reasons, and Sam has smug big brother pecking order priorities to ensure Cas is put in the backseat where he belongs. Sam literally seemed to sort their dynamic as a promotion to being the middlest brother. His position was just deeeeeply threatened by Benny and there’s a clear moment of him reclaiming his position with Dean, and enjoying that he can invoke an elder sibling priviledge over Cas joining the team.

(It’s why I named the fic I wrote about Dean and Jack circa 13x03, “Shotgun”, tbh. Imagine it takes place in the same gas n sip parking lot as 8x08’s open :P)

Sam is happily mentioning Jack’s their little brother now (without the teasing) and there’s some weirdass family dynamics going on which make an unmappable family tree given Cas is both Jack’s chosen father and a brother/husband to the sam and dean dynamic. Ironically given the nightmare of a summer I had, Cas is problematic to sort in this family and has multiple definitions and pulls in different directions even in just a direct reading of the surface text before we get into what everyone interprets it all as, because he’s established with all these different dynamics. But what he is not to Sam is whatever he is to Dean. But he’s not to Dean what Sam is to Dean either. He’s his own thing. We’ve seen clearly he’s different to Sam and Dean each from the perspective of them handling his death. Now they have to handle his return, and Sam is supposedly poised to be more pragmatic and critical of the return, and this immediate pre-hug exchange sets up that Dean will uncritically accept Cas back, but Sam is the one who *asks* and gets Cas’s strange answer about it.

-

HUGS

-

Empty recap! I love hearing Cas talk about shit. Especially actually trying to describe things that happened to him. He’s so utterly bad at it I have to assume it’s because he’s got a completely different cosmic vocabulary and there’s just a whole bunch of concepts and ideas he couldn’t even begin to express so he’s just like… it felt like nothing…

-

Sam twigs that Jack probably did it, in one eye movement you can see him realise. Cas is too busy complaining about Chuck still, I think :P He and Dean off-screen sharing eye rolls about God because Dean had his issues with Chuck in 13x01. The important DeanCas dynamic stuff, their shared storyarc which basically defined their relationship in season 5, just casually happening off screen while Sam Realises Stuff about their more immediate concerns.

-

Cas’s expression when Sam says “Jack” though - like, turning away from Dean, turning on his most squintiest squint.

-

“Oh shit, I forgot to pick the kid up from school.”

-

Jack is googling stuff. Not entirely sure what, but he looks keyed in, computer literate, and sharp. He ignores them at first and so I’m guessing he’s emotionally adolescent now :P He’s wearing all-white and he’s gonna dress like a mini Cas later, but as that meta about his hair from the other day goes, he’s definitely looking older, sweeping his hair back, and the extreme ends of that hairstyle are slicked back versions that don’t have great connotations. They’re definitely riding the ambiguity about how he’s going to go now. He had his little childhood and by now he needs to have learned everything that will shape his forward emotional arc, I think when he can take it into his own hands. I’m just going to go out on a limb and assume he fucks it up. One way or the other, he’s in the wind for the next 2+ episodes.

*holds a finger up to the air* ah yes there’s a fuck up a comin’

-

“Hello Jack”

-

Yeah but do you get an epic off-screen hello like Dean’s, because THAT was something :P

-

I like how Sam is off to the side but Dean’s right there in the background watching Cas and Jack hug. Not to make this all about him when it’s adorable that Cas cares so much about Jack and Jack definitely swings right back into “Oh right we’re trusting him because he said Cas was his father and he rejected Lucifer when he was but a wee little giant naked manbaby” territory. It’s at least a do-over on his emotional development where he gets to be fucked up by the Winchesters but craving Cas’s guidance is what brought Cas back.

But Dean’s right there in the background - he’s got a stake in this reunion that Sam is off to the side for.

-

Double shoulder holds between Cas and Jack and yep I’m keeping that the heck out of my DeanCas shoulder tag for the obvious reasons that I might sort a whole bunch of other useless junk in there like Lucifer or Mick or whatever getting in on it, but as soon as Dean pushes Jack around by the shoulder or Cas and Jack hold each other’s shoulders, we’re into territory you do not tag with my shoulder tag. It’s definitely platonic family meanings now, but that can’t in a billion years erase the previous meaning between Dean and Cas, not least because 4x10 literally made it erotic in a fairly undeniable, you can’t say Dean and Anna hooking up was platonic, kinda way, so all DeanCas shoulder touching has been correctly sorted :P

-

THEY GROW UP SO FAST. He can move the pencil! Although it has immediate connotations of him battling his fear against being evil, I do sort of worry it’s a short term psychological fix - that he saved Sam on instinct in 13x04 so he feels good enough to learn to master enough of his powers to move a pencil with intent and for no purpose other than to do it. But that in the grand scheme you can’t define your goodness about how you use your terrifying powers, and he’s literally just confronting that he brought Cas back without knowing it - good use of his powers, but without knowing he had.

And he found them a case, I’m so proud.

-

See just as we’re getting into it, I have to go. Well, I’m glad I saw the full context of the intro scene because it’s ridiculous that even in the more “neutral” bits where it’s a sam and dean reaction and  should rightfully be so after the directing made such a fuss out of Dean’s reaction last episode, there’s the whole cross thing going on in the directing quietly confirming this is how Dean gets his faith back, and the writing is still flattering Dean’s reaction to Cas as being the uncritically happy one, and Sam beginning to side-eye and wonder.

The point I didn’t quite get to was that although PR can be pretty hit or miss there was an implication Sam and Dean would begin to swap positions on Jack that I think 3x04 began to show with Dean validating him and Sam beginning to doubt he could get Mary back, though obviously not in Jack himself. Dean has now had his confirmation that Jack brought Cas back, but for one thing Sam threw all his energy into getting Jack to get Mary back despite the lack of mutual benefit, and for another Sam’s historically a Bit Weird about Cas and Dean from the perfectly reasonable perspective that he’s not #married to Cas, and therefore there’s a whole bunch of Destiel scenes where he’s on the outside looking in and doesn’t get why. And now Jack chose to bring Cas back and it was Dean’s big win and what Dean wanted, and Dean’s just rushing in like “look at this snarky deadpan asshole I have chosen to love. I do, I do, a thousand times yes!” and flings himself at Cas.

I think my primary concern now I’ve seen the opening is just that Sam’s swinging opinion is less on Jack’s nature and more on his choices. Obviously, understandably, he’s upset he and Mary have a super weird relationship that from his perspective Dean emotionally monopolised while he and Mary were still really weird with each other. Now Jack has gone and done exactly what Sam wanted him to do for himself, but for Dean instead, for his critical unfulfilled relationship that’s being weirdly paralleled hmmm I wonder what that all means with Sam’s critical unfulfilled relationship. Dean is getting another chance with Cas. Sam, currently, has a family of 3 other people, and still probably feels like he has no one.

If 8x08 rules apply.

And this is Dabb era and so I’m side-eyeing the entire thing because Sam has deep, deep wells, and the one we tapped into in 8x23 where he accused Dean of picking “another angel” over him is not just foreshadowing for 9x01 and that whole mess, it’s betraying something Sam almost never shows, except in that one moment he jostled Cas for his rightful place at the front of the car. And I think Sam loves Cas, truly, and not doubting that. I just think he has a lot of resentment for how Dean historically treated him, the need to gain Dean’s approval which is his horrible side of the codependency to complement Dean’s raising Sam as a child thing (see how those go together?) and with Mary back it puts them on equal footing as her sons, maaaybe, but now Dean’s the older child getting all the attention and affection.

Aaaand I drunk me coffee so laterz

-

I got my yoga! *puts a bottle of zen on the shelf for later*

Time to watch!!

-

I’m so not over the freakin RECAP and the way they used the silence to convey the emotional importance of what happened between Dean and Cas on his return

-

Or Cas strolling over to centre stage after his day of chilling by a phone until Dean came to pick him up

-

OR When Cas says the Empty was “Nothing” they show him flickering out into blackness like a ghost. I don’t know if this is Cas’s interpretation of it all or something but it’s super interesting fot him passing between states or whatever, of the obliteration of his Self that he faced and won against.

-

Jack looks up at the weird silence, and sees Sam looking at him with a weird face. “What’s wrong?” he asks, which is pretty emotionally intuitive and honestly I should have crash-watched the previous 5 episodes just to get a clear read on the arc so far, but he’s obviously so so different from when he was a newborn. The fact he can read Sam like that, see that Sam’s thinking SOMETHING at him… He asks what’s WRONG which may be a portentious line, or just that Jack’s still reading things backwards - he can’t sense what’s going on, he tries to read Sam and sees all this uncharacteristic behaviour as something being wrong… But it’s all tidings of the best news of his tiny little life.

-

Sam is waaay concerned with how Jack brought Cas back as well, again, he’s just the one asking. TBH I’m not very confident Sam stuff usually gets addressed so idk if it will ever be more than stuff like this but then on the other hand he already blurted all that stuff about Mary, so we’ll see what happens. I want to be identifying Sam’s journey properly through this though.

-

I love how Jack’s like “I begged for him to come back” and Dean’s NODDING in the background.

-

Dean just hovers through the important reunion/first meeting of Jack and Cas. It’s a HUGE moment for them - and Cas seems okay as he currently is to take on the responsibility for Jack, and Jack seems to be getting what he was asking for from the first line of the show… I’d be like… way careful about celebrating this 6 episodes in :P

-

I mean and then that’s immediately followed by the pencil thing. Which as I said might be a bad omen.

-

“I found a case! A hunter case! Zombies!” *turns and whispers to Cas* “I know what zombies are now.”

-

He’s getting a little manic and hyperactive. We haven’t seen him happy since the nougat thing, so it’s nice that hunting seems to do it for him, although woah mother of a sheltered upbringing considering he’s like 1 month old and only knows basically what we’ve seen him learn, plus Sam’s movies.

His mood seemed to be on the up swing even without Cas, though, because he was looking up the hunt and practicing the pencil thing.

-

elizabethrobertajones  
holy shit

mittensmorgul  
what’s that?  
Dean’s face?

elizabethrobertajones  
that stupid prayer that’s not a prayer thing just got confirmed  
Jack was like “in… dodge city, kansas”  
and the music started  
and Cas looked up like  
where the hell is that music coming from

mittensmorgul  
yep

elizabethrobertajones  
and Dean was like *whistling cowboy music in my heeeead*  
and Cas was like

mittensmorgul  
AND DEAN’S FACE

elizabethrobertajones  
I fucking came back  
and fought the empty  
and walked to the one working payphone in America

mittensmorgul  
Because Dodge City is like Cowboy Central

elizabethrobertajones  
and now I have to deal with Dean’s cowboy fetish

mittensmorgul  
yep

elizabethrobertajones  
This all happens completely silently but they KNOW  
Cas can HEAR that music :P  
Dean is PROJECTING it  
I’m CACKLING

-

*Jack is oblivious*

*Music keeps playing*

“we should check it out”  
“really?” says Cas, and I bet it’s because he can hear that music.

Dean blusters about sure why not and maybe Dodge City is kinda awesome

Cas looks to Sam for help.

He KNOWS

-

I think Mittens just tried to warn me that all ambient music in this episode is in Dean’s head and only Cas can hear it and it’s going to drive him to the fucking brink by the end of the episode despite how much he loves Dean, but then as I was reading that Dean specifically called him and Sam salty hunters, Jack a half angel kid, and Cas just a dude who came back from the dead again, and then labelled them Team Free Will 2.0 which is enormous

he just

let

Jack

in

after all that fucking mourning and misery and projecting.

Oh Dean. Honey.

He’s fixed, but at what cost?

*music continues playing in the background*

THIS IS ALL DEAN EVER WAAANTED this case is specifically made for him

I just typed case as “Cas” and then “cas” and then tried to write case in this sentence and did the same thing again and then again when I tried to write it there. I am addled.

-

But yeah, Jack’s proven himself as far as Dean is concerned, everything’s good, Cas is back, Jack did A Good, and there’s cowboys to roleplay as. Team Free Will is basically their family name or something, and Dean said in 12x19 and it didn’t work but this time he’s *jazzed* and he’s so not questioning anything.

-

This is aggressively Western.

-

They’re carrying clothes bags

Oh Dean no.

-

“This is supposed to be the best room in the joint”

*pause to admire Wanek’s work*

-

Dean just immediately giving all these losers a lesson in cowboy history, because remember last season in 12x07 when he told Sam he loved history and then named all the macho manly dude history times when dudes were dudes and banged a whole lot of other dudes while doing dudely man things in history?

I spent hiatus watching stuff like Black Sails and Wynonna Earp, I shoulda thrown in some gay ass gladiator TV show which I know is almost certainly out there to round off Dean’s interests :P

(I have it paused on his Wyatt Earp face)

-

Dean continues blasting cowboy music which actually drowns out his talking which I think is going to make me CRY because… holy shit the trope where they fade out someone talking about something they love and they’re really really happy and enthusiastic about it and their loved ones are just watching them go and they don’t freaking care what they’re saying, just that they’re saying it??? That’s the rest of TFW2.0 right now. AND US.

Cas doesn’t even know how broken Dean WAS

And Jack is seeing for the first time, the Dean Winchester that literally every cosmic being he’s ever met has fallen madly head over heels in love with.

-

mittensmorgul  
YEP  
But they’re too relieved to see him happy to ask him to please shut up :P

elizabethrobertajones  
Yeah :P

mittensmorgul  
It’s like humoring a 5-year-old at Disneyland

elizabethrobertajones  
YES

mittensmorgul  
because that’s what you do

elizabethrobertajones  
GET HIM A BALLOON AND COTTON CANDY

-

I mean, Cas is hard core judging Dean for the cowboy thing now, and trust me, I watched 6x18 last night, I know everything about how Cas feels about Dean’s known cowboy fetish.

-

Cas can not BELIEVE this is what he came back to.

-

But look at Dean smile.

-

Uhoh, I feel like that was a Worrying Exchange between Cas and Jack - Jack offers Cas the couch because he doesn’t sleep much and Cas is like, I don’t sleep at all.

We have SEEN Jack sleep but this goes with what he said to Mia back in 13x04, about how he doesn’t feel much of anything, which is now strike 2 against his powers as a good thing that would benefit his happiness long term if he were to survive the season and choose to stay with the Winchesters (aside from the big stuff about how huge and scary and out of his control and gifted from Lucifer and all that that is obvious about how they effect him, never mind the psychological damage of that),  because this is also a side-effect of soullessness, and after establishing how human Jack was underneath, we’re now coming around to Jack and how inhuman he may be on the flip side. He doesn’t really sleep ENOUGH to think that he would need the sofa bed, and he possibly needed a lot more sleep when he was a new born because he was still gathering himself together.

Sleep = humanity, though, and they used it to show his human side in 13x02, but now it’s been challenged that he doesn’t do it a whole lot. Cas emphasises that he doesn’t sleep at all because he’s an angel.

-

Sam calling out Dean’s good mood. Just leave him alone.

-

I was gonna meta

I was gonna write serious stuff about this convo

but I have tears streaming down my face

because I saw the magnificent bubble butt on the cowboy behind Dean

and I LOST it

I’m sending Wanek flowers

The most magnificent booty on the entire show.

Which…

Like the cross from earlier

hovers behind Dean

through this conversation

jesus fucking christ Wanek and I think Nina Lopez-Corrado? I didn’t check the director but I swear I saw her name, and I don’t think I can hallucinate a double-barrelled surname accurately.

-

ANYWAY BUTT BUTTS IN on Sam asking Dean why he’s happy and Dean is like …………………………. Cas came back from the dead???

Which is pretty important but BUTT

-

Interrupting Butt

-

“Still can’t believe you brought your own hat” is this confirming Dean’s authentic gear survived

-

Look at Dean’s happy faaaace

and that buuuuut

-

I think there’s actually like, some story going on or something

-

There’s a chevy truck that got pulled over. The “Chevrolet” is quite clear on the screen…

-

Uhoh mysteriously empty truck… YOu’re going to get grabbed and eaten

-

Uhoh corn fields. If something doesnt’ grab you from under the trc-

nope it was from under the truck, the corn was just there to scare him because Corn Is The Horror Vegetable.

-

SLEEPY DEAN

Sleeping under his blanket covered in stallions. The incidental background music is gone because he’s sleeping?

-

Jack recapping everything for Cas.

-

Cas struggling to describe if Heaven is good or not to Jack. Enough to be comforting, at least about the grand scheme the place is good for Kelly to go to… Not so much the motives of the angels. Cas is conflicted with the same issues about telling Jack the truth but he’s not varnishing it and trying to answer well but just be gentle about it

Also this scene is Cas speaking gently and I am just

*touches the screen and whines*

-

“She left me a message. That there was an angel watching over me”

*Cas sags in the realisation that he had to be there and he wasn’t because he got randomly inconveniently killed*

They actually start talking about the serious stuff about this!!!! Cas asks what Jack remembers, Jack says he just remembers Cas as feeling SAFE and I would assume it’s exactly the same as when he brought Cas back then, that he had a strong feeling about Cas and his powers did the rest to get Jack what he wanted/needed out of Cas. For the here and now of Jack, does it matter how Cas ended up caring for him when Cas would have anyway? He already admired Kelly’s bravery and in 12x19 was fighting off feeling like he had to help and care for her, not kill her, but trying to do his orders.

Buuut it was Jack’s power that made Kelly convinced Jack had to be born, and the phrasing she and then Cas used after feeling Jack’s power was that he had to be born *with his powers* - there was an option to extract them and for Jack to be born as a normal baby and for Kelly to live and no drama whatsoever taking place… I love that there’s still a massive ambiguity about it all, but the… core nougat Jack, the soul and humanity part of him, still wants to be good and has the chance to be. Cas feels he can trust JACK and that he and Kelly were right… But looking at the good human part of him. The powers remain dangerous, and with them Jack is learning rapidly and can literally nudge Cas in the Empty, where God can’t go.

-

This scene is difficult to watch because it’s Cas talking all softly and it’s murdering me. Straight up murdering me.

-

But I love the idea Cas has this massive aura of just feeling safe with him

random strangers on the bus just ask him to watch their stuff

tourists ask him to take their photos and hand him expensive cameras

-

Awww sleepy fluffy Dea- “HAWWARGHJDG” *points a gun at Jack*

The funny thing is Jack trusts Dean not to shoot him and doesn’t react with his powers, and Cas comes rushing in knowing not to go poke Dean awake like that

how does CAS know???

His method is standing quietly and ominously and getting louder and louder in his staring until it wakes Dean up naturally. He’s never tried to shoot Cas ON CAMERA because he just jumps to see him there a couple of times.

I can only assume they had a weird camping trip experience once some time around the middle of season 12

-

Dean is pretty fluffy when he wakes up though

He just wants coffee

-

the most relatable character ever

-

The Dean pouring coffee shot is almost identical to the Cas pouring coffee in 9x06 moment. Imma put them side by side because I did it from 9x03/9x06 back when I was doing my rewatch but this is like… identical.

-

Poor sleepy Dean.

Cas knows him so well. “He’s an angry sleeper. Like a bear.” This is without a doubt the most husband-y thing Cas has ever said ever in the entire show.

You don’t just say shit like that about people :P That’s an affectionate commentary on Dean’s sleep habits. Like Cas knows them intimately well.

it’s disgustingly sweet

-

And Dean just sits there in the background with his cowboy mug drinking his cowboy coffee on the cowboy sofa.

-

Although Dean is much happier, he’s critiquing Jack’s analysis of it being zombies, but this might have scaled down to a Claire scenario where he just wants to encourage Jack to not leap to conclusions based off a first read without all the info and to actually dig down (lol he’s going to the graveyard) and form his opinion when he’s done his homework and has actual EVIDENCE in front of him.

Some light meta commentary on analysis, which I always appreciate :D

-

Sam splits the team up and picks Jack on his team so Dean and Cas can work together! He is… social engineering. Wing man-ing.

-

Meanwhile, in the complex and fascinating mind of Dean Winchester: Cas is back, I am so gay for him, there’s a happy cowboy case to solve, but COFFEE FIRST, sit your ass down, angel, I’m drinking this

and Cas sits

… and the music starts again

Dean’s brain is starting to boot back up to the potential of the day

-

I am pretty sure Cas made that coffee for Dean too, because of the looks exchanged after grumpy bear was woken up.

-

I am in DEEP with these assholes and their stupid domestic drama over coffee. This is right out of a fan fic, just because they’re doing normal boring domestic things and it is amazing

-

But now, i assume, they work the case..

-

*more cowboy music*

*louder music*

-

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah here’s the costumes.

Dean explaining the Ruse to Cas

Holy shit.

The hat is from the motel. It says “STAMPEDE” on it. All the promo pics hid THAT gem from us

-

Dean loves it

-

No he hates it, he took the STAMPEDE MOTEL ribbon off. I am disappointed.

-

Dean’s advice for blending in: act like you’re in Tombstone, the movie, aka the one that margeritte watched for us so we didn’t have to

-

Dean also made Cas watch it and I think I’m basically done with the show, I can just, like, retire to a little cottage in the hills, because what fucking work do I even have left to do around here

-

Asdkfjs I should have watched the movie but I haven’t so I’m urgently exchanging notes in class

elizabethrobertajones  
Dean’s turned on by this  
isn’t he? :P  
ugh  
UGH  
I hate this show  
anyway what was that exact reference Cas made? :P

mittensmorgul  
Cas said one of Doc Holliday’s lines, which was said by Val Kilmer in the movie…

elizabethrobertajones  
oh boy

mittensmorgul  
“I’m your huckleberry” loosely translates as “I’m your man” or “I’m with you”

elizabethrobertajones  
Dean has a thing for Doc :P

mittensmorgul  
YES

elizabethrobertajones  
Welllllp  
they’re gay now  
Destiel just went canon in the out of the blue scenario  
that none of us called

mittensmorgul  
And Dean’s alias is Kurt Russell, who played Wyatt Earp.

elizabethrobertajones  
but I don’t care :P  
yeah

mittensmorgul  
Just let that sink in

elizabethrobertajones  
they’re.. super gay for each other?

mittensmorgul  
yeah

elizabethrobertajones  
askgdfjklsdk

-

I’m also distressed because of in Wynonna Earp, Doc is so into Wynnona and I am convinced that it’s because she reminds him of Wyatt and there was something there too, so even *my* informal summer reading material for this class backs it up :P

-

ALSO DEAN MADE CAS WEAR THE HAT

HE MADE HIM

CAS CHECKING HIS APPEARANCE IN THE MIRROR

CAS NOT THINKING ABOUT THE MOVIE UNTIL DEAN REMINDS HIM AND THEN QUOTING IT AT DEAN AND DEAN GETTING ALL NERVOUS SWALLOW-ING ABOUT IT

HE’S SO INTO CAS

THEY DO THE COWBOY ROLEPLAY AFTER THEY WATCH THE MOVIES

THERE IS POPCORN ALL OVER THE FLOOR AND SAM HEARS COWBOY NOISES ACROSS THE BUNKER HE DOES NOT WANT TO HEAR

-

I can’t believe how much Dean loves Cas and I have been studying this for years

-

*Dean provides more background music*

They’re so badass.

-

elizabethrobertajones  
CAS LOVES IT  
HE LOVES IT  
HE SAID HOWDY PARTNER AND THEY LET HIM ONTO THE CRIME SCENE AND HE’S LIKE FUCK YEAH THAT WAS AWESOME  
Dean has officially, emphatically, ruined the angel.  
He’s doing accents and getting a kick out of it

mittensmorgul  
YES

elizabethrobertajones  
there is no going back

mittensmorgul  
YES  
Dean’s accent kink is kicking into high gear

elizabethrobertajones  
Cowboy roleplay in bed is the only direction this can go for them

-

*scary wheeze laugh as Cas panics and looks to Dean for help, and just blurts that he’s Val Kilmer without any style*

Sergeant Phillips has the best “what the fuck” eyebrows.

“Yeah. Okay.”

-

Aw but Cas does his thing where he’s all sweet and genuine about “sorry for your loss”

Phillips says he’d known Carl since he was a 1 day old baby. We have known Jack since he was a 1 day old baby. Do not like the idea of him being left to the “cy-otes” in whatever metaphorical form that takes.

-

There’s so much establishing who they are and what they’re doing, and whether they belong or not. A disproportionate amount maybe just because it’s a lot about Cas establishing the same things.

-

Oh hey this looks like fun. Athena Lopez. Rockabilly aesthetic undertaker. Incredible. She looks like a lot of hipsters I see in my hipster town. It’s amazing what just having a personal style does to make a character stand out… They’re usually dressed so generically normal or sometimes slightly goth or edgy. She’s got the whole fancy victory curls hairstyle and then modern headphones clamped on top of it.

-

Hahahaha she was at an Amanda Palmer concert. Sam knows who that is. This is getting dangerously close to looping back to Neil Gaiman, who we were talking about so much after last episode. Since he’s married to her and all :P

-

Athena has GOT to be important later or she’s the most wasted interesting character ever :P

-

I think she thinks Jack is kind of adorable :D

-

Jack is trying so hard.

-

He hasn’t interacted with many people.

-

Sam is juuuuust awkward enough with her that I wonder if he might think she’s hot shit (I mean, I do :P) and she has definitely confirmed she’s an age bracket above Jack, aka into Sam’s dating range, with the permission slip thing :P

Who knows how this all goes but I’m apparently shipping Sam with every cool girl who comes within 100 miles of him in his quest for happiness, and I get the feeling this may be a pretty bad idea :P On the other hand, he could take her to concerts and it’s all great. That would be fun.

-

Awwwww Jack waving around an EMF reader in a graveyard.

-

Ew, the ghoul chewed its way out of the grave

-

At least it was pre-dug for them by the cops

-

Hey, Sam found a hole. A hole rather like how in the cold open, the ghoul was making holes underground to grab people.

-

Ewwwww hip bone.

-

Jack didn’t know what a ghoul was at all. Has to be filled in on the basic detail to improve his hypothesis. “Like a zombie shapeshifter!” he’s pleased to have been in the ballpark, anyway.

-

Dean is wearing his hat indoors, and is the only one in anything remotely approaching costume, since Cas has ditched his hat.

-

Uhoh Rockabilly Athena being followed.

-

And they’re suspecting her but she’s walking along with her headphones oooon oh boy this is how Claire got bit

-

Ohhhh the cowboy with the incredible ass appears to be a cowgirl when  you see the wide shot of the motel.

I mean fair enough that’s still hilarious and now Dean’s standing over by the other one who is definitely a cowboy, now wearing similar colours, has frequently had ripped jeans like that… He likes cowperson ass whichever way :P

he also has the horns over his head which is interesting.

I love how Sam is doing the sitting thing he does backwards in chairs (he has never interacted with a chair in his life until he was in his 30s, it’s so weird how he doesn’t know how they work)

Cas is slumped on the sofa like… wow. FML.

Jack is still enthusiastically researching everything.

And Dean’s grabbed a beer and is presiding over his family.

-

Dean says, “I’m getting sick and tired of fighting things that LOOK like other things” - has that been a theme this season? we haven’t had too many MotW yet… Last episode was ghosts, the one before shifters, sure, then a wraith that never changed its face… Asmodeus in 13x02 is the main plot demon with shapeshifting powers and that’s it. Except for being decieved by Miriam the fries angel who ACTED human but never changed her look. I wonder where that comes from. I suppose there’s so much meta about Dean and shifters out there and I’m tired and on a deadline to finish this so.

*pin*

-

Cas suggests Athena because named character, Sam agrees it’s smart, but Dean’s like… Guys.

-

She’s still being staaaalked

-

Jack’s been working hard while Cas and Sam come up with random bad ideas, and Dean passes judgement on them

-

And tada we know who it is

-

ooops he’s dating Athena. He is obviously a jerk because he slapped her rear so before we know anything about him we know he’s scum :P She’s too good for hiiim

She may also not survive especially if she’s unaware he’s a ghoul and he’s just attracted to her because A: have you seen her and B: she hangs out with dead bodies all day and ghouls dig that shit :P

-

Oooh she’s also wearing the same scarf as he has around his neck.

-

Lovers being coded by wearing the same stuff as each other, and if it wasn’t clear enough Cas had a red ribbon around his hat before Dean yanked it off, and they were matchy matchy cowboy hats when the rest of TFW2.0 wasn’t.

-

Dean says he’s going to go put his boots on when he’s already in full body shots been revealed to be wearing his regular boots

-

More music, more headache for Cas, more Dean whooping from the other room about a cowboy he super loves being the bad guy because DUDE.

-

Meanwhile said cowboy is annoyed that Athena got into the make up school she applied for. DUDE. I hope she’s learning that to get better at dead bodies because otherwise it’s like hi Gwenyth Paltrow I’m doing your make up for the movie, trust me I’ve been applying foundation to corpses since I was a lil girl and wait come back!

-

AAAH it’s special effects! SHE’S SO COOL

-

He is NOT pleased she got into her school.

-

A ghoul would think they have a good thing with an undertaker

-

She casually says the weird stuff Jack asked about, which means OOPS Jack’s ongoing inexperience and lack of social awareness is sabotaging the case. I swear there was another one that got sabotaged because of something they did… Would it have to be 13x04? I kind of lost track of the going back and forth in that episode in my memory but I feel like there was a time when they recently escalated something that tipped the bad guy off to them.

-

Anyway, Jack fucks up, accidentally, not  his fault, he’s trying so hard to be good at the job and in this show hunting = “the life” and their normality and a way of expressing humanity.

-

You have to admit, aside from the cowboy dude being an ass (I HAVE to go back and get his name) they make a cute matchy matchy couple.

He’s called Dave. I need to remember that.

-

But yay Jack got them the intel they need

-

CAR FULL OF TFW2.0

Cas and Jack sit in the back

-

Dean did not, in fact, change into his boots.

-

They leave Cas and Jack in the car. Pfft. Jack was feeling left out about that in 13x04.

-

I think Athena maaay survive this if all the action is about to take place at the bank? She’s not with them.

-

Oldey timey bank robbery

-

Yey Dean is outside to head him off.

-

“2… 3… 4 hunters!” Of course Jack’s just smiling cheerfully after cracking the case, Cas is lurking, and Sam and Dean have the guns.

-

SHOOT OUT

-

Awwww Cas checking Jack is okaaay

-

There is a lot of stuff just happening in this episode that will probably only be meta-able about the bigger picture narrative stuff but isn’t particularly easy to comment on in the moment >.> I’m trying to flag up things I think might be important but it’s hard :P

-

We have a parallel of Jack saying “I’ve got this” and rushing off, Cas behind him, and the guard deciding to go out and telling the bank teller to stay back

-

Jack gets shot twice and Cas is like D:

Jack’s like… wow that did nothing

POWERS TIME

Right as the guard rushes in - noooo it’s exactly what I feared from the promo, he gets caught in the crossfire of Jack’s attempt to use his powers so you get a direct parallel of a good guy getting hurt in the attempt to get a bad guy.  
-

Aaand he kills the guard but Dave is fine because he just got knocked back and ghouls are tougher than that.

(Also, Jack is still bleeding a worrying amount even if it hasn’t killed him >.>)

-

I’m so upset, because this was Bad. And Jack’s got a pretty terrible black and white moral compass that has none of the grey area filled in and he was trying so hard to do good and use his powers for good.

-

Also Mittens just reminded me that this is what Eileen did in 12x17. And that was killing her with guilt and the guy was a dick and Dagon set her up to shoot him, basically…

Is the fact it’s mirroring something that happened while Jack was in the womb and would have killed him, kinda cosmic consequences in the way the universe is poetic, just bouncing off these things that have happened around him?

-

Ugh. Poor Jack.

-

Meanwhile, Dean is nearly hit by a car, AGAIN, which is like the 2nd time this season and 13x05 used the car hitting death in the recap

-

Uhoh, is Cas okay?

He can’t bring people back from the dead any more, which is sort of a thing that’s been a thing for a while. I guess?? is this official confirmation that Cas can only heal but to an extent of reasonable D&D rules for this sort of thing? This is what I’ve been working on the whole time and this seems to be continuity from how he was before.

-

I think Jack’s manifesting that sound of thunder because it began in the previous scene and keeps on going in the next while he’s sitting there reflecting on it.

-

in 13x05 the lightning was about Billie and moving between the veil and not. In this episode it’s the thunder for Jack’s distress… I thought it was connected to Cas not healing but it was Jack’s distress noise, so yeah.

Nothing wrong with Cas, he’s exactly as he was before, and Jack was the one making the noises of cosmic unrest while Cas was trying to heal the poor security guard.

In 10x20 he couldn’t heal Amelia’s damage which I think was a demonstration that he’s not that powerful any more except for big owies which aren’t actually threatening your life, like Sam’s “marshmallow foot” or Dean’s awful knee.

-

I also hate that I feel the instant need to clarify that without checking in on fandom

-

That I’ve just been reading the story in a linear way and this is how it all seemed like it was being presented and lo and behold Cas still can’t bring people back from the dead and there was no reason to think he had wings (payphone) or stronger powers if he had no wings still, but that he was going to continue on and this is just a second chance (or….. 5th chance?)

-

Anyway Jack is miserable and the rest of his family is clustered in the corner worrying about him.

-

Aw no, Dean sends Cas away to help Jack and tells Cas to take him away to the Bunker. Dean watches him go to Jack with this look like… Oh no.

-

I’m guessing Jack legs it at some point because of this.

-

Anyway Dave has gone back to Athena and is being terrifying. “hey I got shot and robbed a bank”

Oh no

“I had no choice, I had to”

those words always suck

-

Yeah, dumping right now might be a bad idea when she realises he’s the graverobber…

He calls her a bitch and immediately gets violent and grabby and possessive. Seems like douchey guys are a real theme around here right now. 13x04 and 13x06 will probably need a side by side look between Buddy and Dave. Dave is very possessive and manipulative, saying he gave everything for her.

I wonder if this is highlighting the sort of bad extreme manipulative language TFW uses with each other… The first parallel to mind is 5x02 and Cas talking about giving everything for Dean.

-

WE NEED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE

100 points to Davy

-

Oh good, the sergeant is here.

Dean’s “borrowed” another car… Someone else is driving the Impala

-

I love Sergeant Phillips. He’s like, Old West Law Man. Dean barely needed to talk to him to just immediately admire the crap out of him for how he does the job :D

ALSO

Dean is in a better state where he can admire people doing the job in a way that can rehabilitate him to doing the actual job he does, as a sort of direct metaphor application like a poultice to a wound.

“This is family business”

-

And here we are at the cold open scene and all the explanation for why Dean is alone and working with Sergeant Phillips to finish the case.

-

Oh he has a white hat

which is currently lying on the ground

-

Come on dean, go in the hole

-

“Mm-m. I don’t wanna”

-

GO IN THE FUCKIN HOLE

-

Dean goes into the hole. Good.

-

He’s having a horrible time. Dodge City is ruined for him.

-

Oh no

-

That “oh no” was meant to convey “Sam is driving and Cas is shotgun with Jack in the back” but I have taken migraine medication that’s fucked me up so I kind of forgot you’re not all gonna know exactly what’s happening if I just comment and you all are in the same room as me.

-

That comment also. Um. re: 8x08 as I was talking about this morning before the crack of dawn.

-

Holy shit Jack is stuck in a car with 2 people who have basically murdered and broken the universe for years on end and now get to give him The Talk about murdering people. Sam is like are you okay and Cas is like it’s okay i murdered a whole bunch of people who didn’t deserve it

at least it’s getting him to talk about his trauma, re: the Empty and that look about all the dead angels in there and the mistakes the Empty (who I just typed as “metatron”, pls witness my brain melting in slo mo as you read this) showed him, mostly to all in relation to big ass plans that went very very wrong - leading to the fall, or Cas killing thousands of angels, or unleashing Leviathan on the world.

-

Jack sitting in the back seat with red lights pouring over him. I wrote a LOT once upon a time when I was doing the rewatch about when red lights fall on the Winchesters in the car and how it means baaaad things.

-

I guess this car is the most judgement free zone in the universe for fucking up and killing someone though

listening to Cas talk about killing people he loves is awful though. Just chatting to Mittens about all the named angels he’s killed over the years. NOT a fun chat :D

-

Oh no, Jack is so done :(

Sam giving him the “we believe in you” speech is honestly a parallel to Dean trying to pep talk Kevin with 100s of “in this life” speeches

-

Jack’s probably gonna make a lil bag out of a hanky tied to a stick, pack his 3 possessions and a comically large cheese, and go

-

Yey Dean made it through the tunnels. Enjoy your weird metaphorical rebirth

-

Okay so far the Sergeant and Athena are alive. They’re awesome so I don’t want either to die.

-

The Sergeant’s face when he sees Dave. Loving this guy

-

Can Athena talk Dave down? With the break up of the century (literally, if this guy is 100 years old)

Dean telling him that break ups can be a bitch. Lol. He would knooow. He feels rejected like 1000% of the time and just had to tell Cas to leave when things had been going well.

(Also did I mention that Dave calling Athena a bitch feels like the first time we’ve heard that word in a while and it’s being used by the 2nd toxic masculinity representation of a dudebro dick (and in this case linked to Dean by his admiration for manly dudebro cowboys) so hopefully blah blah stuff about not using bitch any more blah blah Dean and toxic masculinty)

-

YEY the Sergeant got the kill. Metaphorically interesting because family revenge, family business, and the relationship to the job. Dean’s told he isn’t fast enough, so he steps aside for someone faster, and more committed to it all than he is. WHY is this like the 2nd or 3rd time this season I’ve been presented with Dean subtextually being told to retire, combined with Billie telling him he has work to do which feels to me like a pressure in a push-pull scenario but also maybe the Last Job he needs to do?

sure the Sergeant is older than Dean but he’s a metaphorical stand in for someone faster, better suited, and more MOTIVATED.

-

The obvious answers may be the “supernatural winds down, wayward sisters rises from its ashes” route of the story

-

Or something for Jack to do if he truly ends up embedded in the family dynamic. He has rather been patched in even if Cas cares deeply for him and there’s a sort of… system going on here

-

At least Athena AND the Sergeant survived!

-

Dean summons one last bit of cowboy music while delivering his one liner. Happy trails, cowboy.

-

Dean comes up with a story which… is not the truth. Not the monster truth. But he covers for Jack. Not like 13x01 and spilling all the truth.

-

Dean comes back to the Bunker. Jack is isolated alone in the library where he started the episode. Library table = heart of the family home. War table = Cas and Sam once again isolated like they were in the nook when worrying about Jack. Keeping their distance from Jack, worrying about the conflict.

I love every single shot from the library looking at the war room just because of the scale of this set, but this one is from Jack’s eyes, I think, at least metaphorically.

-

*coded family talk*

*leaving Jack out in isolation*

-

He comes storming in to the main room. the WAR room. Asking about the guard, his family, the things which are giving Jack conflict, and his issues with how they’re dealing with it

-

They all looks so tired

-

Dean has chosen Cas’s side of the table.

-

Dean just straight up honestly tells Jack the worst news about the guard having had a family, because he doesn’t sugar coat any more

-

Sam tries an “in this life” speech which I am awarding myself 10 points for because of all the babbling about Kevin. Pls note my babbling about Kevin from last episode, because he is super important to understanding the fuckedupness of the Winchesters since season 9. And jack is getting right into a nook kevin occupied for them.

And yeah Sam has the responsibility to “in this life” to Jack which Dean had to Kevin

-

Jack turns away, unable to listen to this. He sees they’re scared of him.

And now he’s thinking he’s a monster

“no you’re not.”

YAY DEAN. “If you’re a monster, we’re all monsters” EXCELLENT.

-

“Every time I try and do something good people get hurt” yeah that’s all their lives.

-

Aw no, he’s realising he isn’t cut out for hunting and trying to do what they do in order to be good even though he was so excitable about it.

He thought he was “getting  better” which implies he feels like he was bad at some point already

Ehehe cut to “I don’t know what I am” with Cas looking sadly at him, because that’s Cas’s arc all summed up in one line.

-

he’s packed his little bag and ready to go

“If I stay I’m going to hurt you. All of you. You’re all I have”

Jack knocks them all back and disappears with WING NOISES. I AM DELIGHTED.

He has literally flown the nest

-

I was looking at that shelf of books wondering what it was doing in the war room… It was literally there for them to be knocked into :P

-

Why are they even yelling for him or looking around the bunker. Cas gets a nice long distraught look.

And hey, not a worst case scenario, Cas is still with them!

…

*slides £20 to Dabb to use the line “we ain’t got jack on Jack”


	7. 13x07

Should probably not have multiple scenarios where I snark out loud and then the very next line of dialogue is that snark but innocently delivered.

Heyooo it’s not our Christmas cliffhanger though!

Expectations: It has literally just occurred to me right now sitting down to type out my expectations that this season’s *entire* main plot so far has been “the spawn of satan is cuter than we expected”.

I’m still trying to wrangle the idea of how you get hours of Buckleming plot twists and slow exposition out of this, although introducing 18 different angles for them to tackle the problem and returning us to the AU world is a good start to have at least 4 plot threads going and hey I feel like this episode is supposed to be a breather for having too many Jack episodes in a row which makes it even funnier that they’re gonna have to deal with the absence of something but who knows maybe he will show up before episode 9. If not they may genuinely be tricked into considering narrative negative space in some form or another, at least by the actual omission of Jack from the episode, despite the fact it has to be about him.

There’s like at least 3 individual ways each arc might go terribly, and I’m typing this as pre-yoga thoughts while trying to do my NaNoWriMo and I watched Brooklyn 99 already this morning, and essentially I’m pretty much just bracing against “Oh god this new sleep pattern is the worst and it has ruined nearly every episode this season for me” migraines. So I’m just gonna be super chill because the stress of this ridiculous bed at 8pm awake at 5am thing is killing me without bad writing on my favourite show.

So, instead of modelling a worst case scenario, here’s a best case one: it’s crowded, the pacing is bad, there’s some bizarre lines of dialogue and no room for any character interaction and the sneak peek already showed us the sum total of Destiel interaction but in hindsight with the rest of the episode that’s actually a plus, and aside from that there’s no rape or catastrophic bad decisions or characterisation that just makes our guys look like idiots because the villains aren’t that smart and they’re still outwitting them or something. Cas wasn’t even mentioned in the episode description if I recall and I would like to think that is because he gets Buckleminged in the way where they forget he exists so he’s in 2 scenes and just kinda stops at some point and that’s the last we hear of him for a few episodes but at least nothing happened to him :P

(It HELPS that the bad decision of the year seems like it should be Jack and Kaia ganging up in 13x09 and this is just a plot filler episode where they can’t blow everything up from sheer incompetence, since the main plot is still Jack, and all Buckleming can do is escalate stuff but not so much we find Jack, so they’re mostly running free with Lucifer, Michael and Asmodeus on the playground they’ve been permitted to keep them distracted. On the other hand, that does not lend itself towards ‘storytelling structure’ whatsoever. So I may derive some fun from mentally re-writing this episode as it goes as well.)

-

Hi I’m back and I have tea and preemptive paracetamol and look I not do crap like this lightly but the only thing wrong with me is sleep and yoga but glug glug glug down the hatch, I’m not fucking around, migraine. I swear to god if I even see a HINT of you…

-

I should also mention that my only prep for this episode was watching Tall Tales last night with my mum because we’re lightly re-watching season 2 and I thought you know what look how far that fucker has come that he’s just one of the show’s regular directors now or something. I forgot that completely this morning so I’m amending my expectations (it WAS annoyingly early in the day) to add that Speight hasn’t directed a Buckleming yet but I’m interested to see how he handles it.

-

The episode starts with Mary cheerfully punching Lucifer at least 3 times in the face. I am still extremely proud of her for doing that but overall disappointed that it’s led to her banishment to be a Buckleming character this season, which has been a fast way to ruin characters.

We get the entire first minute of the recap in Buckleming POV, aka they write the corny villains - and specifically a lot of Asmodeus point of view, his summary of the situation and what needs doing, having graciously inherited this throne, and comments on where Lucifer is as a sort of trailing off, well that’s not my concern if he’s gone. Only at the minute mark does the recap flip around to something genuinely ABOUT Jack as we’ve been seeing him, rather than trying to sell Jack as woooo Lucifer’s scaaary son. Suddenly Jack’s own identity crisis and him leaving.

Maybe it’s just because they were trimming for time, but they cut the “all of you” from “I know I’m going to hurt you” but they also left the focus on Sam. I am mostly amused that by removing the clarification - which has been a theme of the season - it reduces that moment to a bare minimum surface layer, as if to say bye bye writing depth hello random action.

-

I had a burgeoning theory last year from one episode or another that pretty much everyone is lampooning Buckleming while letting them get on with writing their stuff, and trying to run loops around them in basically any other way.

-

There was something going on on screen involving a lot of stock footage while I was digging around in my bag looking for my 3DS assuming this was gonna be a Lucifer scene. I still think they’re softening him up to kill him, but that’s something I have to hope. One of the other non-redemption options is that they need to make him at least halfway manageable if he is gonna end up working with Cas or something. There is something vaguely appropriate matching Buckleming dialogue to Lucifer melodramatics, but unfortunately I really can’t give these writers or that character much of a chance so while I’m happy to let them take him to play with over on their bit of the story like a chew toy to keep them off the stuff I like, it is annoying this is all the canon of the show I like >.>

-

One or the other of Buckleming really really dislikes God and organised religion though, and that does often lend the interesting thing to an episode where for some reason as soon as religion is involved the writing actually gets halfway decent.

One thing Lucifer says that catches my interest is his idea the universe is written without irony, when tbh that has literally been his downfall in season 5, and in general the universe is ironic to the WINCHESTERS to whom the universe is actually happening to, and there’s the whole Dean is the centre of the universe thing, and THEN there’s Billie’s line about how sometimes the universe is poetic, coupled with how Dean got Cas back entirely through dramatic irony. I can’t remember if Chuck commented on dramatic irony. Anyway Lucifer sucks, the story doesn’t happen to him and he doesn’t have the resources to read it. Metatron *thrived* on that sort of thing.

-

I like the visual of Michael standing with the sun behind him - it gives him absolutely the divine look he’d love to have, and I just wish he didn’t have randomly shirtless Lucifer taking up some of that visual. If someone doesn’t make a gifset chopping Lucifer out to just enjoy that image, I will make one, perhaps.

Something else to enjoy about this: they locked Mark P in some sort of medieval torture device and no matter how comfy you try and make it, there’s obvious limits to that, so I will enjoy that he had to do that.

-

Michael sees that Lucifer is scared of being locked up and caged, which actually is… accidentally or not… a pretty clever callback, although it wouldn’t have killed them to have Michael deduce this on screen, because in 9x18 Dean - Michael’s vessel - deduces that Gadreel - a blatant Lucifer parallel in many respects while obviously not in many many others - is terrified of being caged again.

Of course that exchange is one of the single most fascinatingly well-acted exchanges of the entire show which on my umpteenth viewing still knocks me completely flat so it’s not a FAIR comparison, but it is an interesting one.

-

I like that Michael think that the main universe is already paradise - in comparison to his shithole, definitely, because it still has pretty stock footage. Thematically interesting since obviously paradise is a bit of an issue with what people want…

-

LOL Wanek’s ridiculous “concrete bunker” set… The camera pulls back and there’s a massive Jesus on the wall and Lucifer’s hanging behind him screeching and it’s like… That is an inanimate lump of wood and I can see it rolling its eyes at you.

In the earlier moments out here in the AU we saw the church from 8x23 poking up out of the rubble, and whether this is the same one or not NOW, because I think it was a bit too buried to be this one, it conjures the memory of 8x23, and that one was interesting specifically because Jesus wasn’t there - the cross had only his hands and feet remaining and the rest had been torn down. Sam was inserted into that empty space because he was doing the big heroic world-saving sacrifice that from one direction of pure irony the episode was named after (since he decided not to do it/the real motives for his sacrifice were way more interesting than him going through with it heroically anyway etc) but it was another Sam and Jesus moment, like in 5x22 where he more straight-forwardly sacrificed himself.

(And jeeze you watch one episode with the guy and now I can’t get him out of my head - remembering in 9x18 Gabriel snarking about how he died for their sins and then making one of the few Jesus references on the show. Jesus is usually extremely absent from this show, so actually having him on screen is very interesting)

Anyway I am pretty sure this is almost entirely to remind Lucifer what a great big fucking drama queen he is being about this all and of course he’s sacrificing for nothing.

-

Blah blah promo scene.

They have the photo of Jack from Mia’s security camera which means no one has snapped a cute picture of him on their phone yet, Cas included. Disappointing.

-

Now, I’m pretty hesitant to get into characterisation in BL episodes, and Dean just generically wryly comments on how powerful Jack is which could mean anything but Sam then says he might be covering his tracks and then Cas, who has to be written sympathetic to Jack, comes through the door saying that it could mean Jack is in trouble with the various forces that want to control him. Sam’s comment coupled with Cas’s interruption seems to make it much more likely that Sam’s comment is to be taken as vaguely unnerved/suspicious of what Jack can do, and that he’s doing things like that Dean implies. That Jack learned so fast he might be able to cause a fair amount of destruction but conceal it from them and if they’re trying to track him, Sam is expecting destruction.

-

Dean also came from the kitchen with coffees so why is Cas coming from the back of the Bunker… I’m gonna have to assume he was until just now lounging around in Dean’s bed and Dean was like I better go get coffee and help Sam and Cas was like yeah but thanks for the 'sorry your son ran away’ sex i feel a lot better and Dean was like no problem babe, and probably gave Cas one of those ridiculous shoulder nudges in the most no homo way ever before he got up to find where they threw his underwear an hour earlier, and Cas just kinda chilled while Dean was getting the coffee so as not to be suspicious by piling in on Sam after taking the exact same length break from the search but then they fucked it up and still managed to enter the scene within 30 seconds of each other.

Yeah, that’s probably it.

-

I just saw the list of guest stars wander by and took 3 emergency gulps of my tea at that combo of Osric and for some reason DHJ because file that under genuinely unexpected :P

-

PS: I know we knew Kevin would be back this year but the fact I managed to find Kevin thematic stuff in the last 2 episodes in a row still feels important to me as storytelling rather than foreshadowing.

-

Anyway Cas tries to tell Dean the angels don’t like him, and Dean volunteering to go with him because “i could go with you” is a thing and they keep doing it to each other and ow

-

Blah blah we could work a case. Are you serious? I really seriously hope this is not literally Buckleming’s thought process about wtf do we do with Sam and Dean this episode after establishing maybe 4-5 other plotlines we need to handle away from them. I hope it turns out to be directly main plot related, whatever they stumble on, but we already now have them in a position where any involvement with the main stuff will be them stumbling on it or it coming to them. See above: ways in which the main characters are automatically made to be stupid. Subtle things, like not being able to imagine a way in which Sam and Dean are resourceful enough to even start to find Jack which doesn’t involve googling things.

I mean we have no clue what you’re doing with this random witch seeming case, why can’t you bring a detail foreward if it’s from the main plot to give us a clue. And if it’s not, tell us something connected to it which will at least make Sam and Dean interested in it as a lead? Even if they’re not right about why, put them on the trail because they’re good at their jobs!

-

Anyway hi Asmodeus? As soon as we clear the promo scene etc I start assuming everyone is Asmodeus

I mean, in this case it literally is. but you can’t trust anyone these days.

He needs to have his equivalent scene to sitting around in the Bunker googling, which, which is to say, the same type of minions who brought Crowley or Lucifer news are now coming toadying in to tell Asmodeus news, and the only difference is his name is harder to spell.

He’s trying to do the same thing reaching out to Jack that we saw Lucifer trying to do last season, to Dagon. There is always the possibility that Asmodeus just isn’t powerful enough to get into Jack’s head from this extreme range when he has no idea where he is. Loser.

This minion seems to be mistakenly labelling Jack as “the Jack”, maybe not as a mark of respect but more misunderstanding what he is, that he’s not a thing, that that’s his name…

-

Asmodeus asks who’s protecting Jack, and cut to the image of Jesus again. I don’t know about him, but tbh it could just be that Jack is protecting HIMSELF and they’ve massive underestimated him to do that. Jesus on this show represents a lot more of the personal autonomy saving yourself thing.

Also hey as long as we’re not seeing Jack, we’re getting that gosh darned hole in the narrative that he represents while he’s missing. Is this actually a lesson in subtlety?

-

Michael meanwhile is enjoying tormenting Lucifer some more because blah blah sole purpose in life and what do you even do when you win.

Lucifer appears to have claimed to be a god in the SPN verse and Michael’s like, here you’re pathetic, and I’m like, mate, he was pretty pathetic in the main SPN universe too

-

There’s some cool crosses on the walls which are trying to help, bringing light into this church.

-

Yeah where is Mary anyway - I wasn’t gonna ask, but then Lucifer seemed to imply that Michael was keeping her around.

I mean sheesh the easiest way to get Mary around is to just have her in the scene still lurking but then film it as if it’s almost entirely from her eyeballs POV if she doesn’t have anything else to be doing right now - having her witnessing this theatre as the person from the main SPN world who’s come over here.

-

KEV

-

Awwww he’s gone a wee bit off the rails in this world, seeing as he’d have had to be helping Michael and reading tablets the entire time and also the entire world appears to be destroyed.

-

I don’t know why Lucifer’s having a personal reaction to Kevin unless I totally forgot something but they were literally never in the same seasons as each other although weirdly both in 11x21 so obviously must just be angels would know all the prophetsand which one was currently active… Maybe he’s just surprised that in the AU Kevin survived even longer than he did in the supposedly better world.

Well there aren’t any Winchesters in this one and Lucifer always underestimates them, in this case positively re: likelihood of getting Kevin killed :P

-

Oh great they’re powering down Lucifer a bit. Well that should make him much more irritating.

I mean mostly because everything makes him irritating.

But it means the show wants him around some more but they can’t have him at full power because it’s just inconvenient so now they’re finding a reason to water him down so they can have him around dragging his heels and complaining. I suppose it might make some comparisons to Cas, who’s on a smidgen of left-over grace, but again, see also: eye rolling wooden Jesus, there’s no way you can redeem Lucifer and not by comparing him to Cas.

Metatron got some sort of treatment but he was nowhere near like Cas even when he was done being redeemed and he still had to be killed off doing a heroic thing rather than let him stick around.

I’m just grinding my teeth and I already got part of the way through the next scene but UGH

-

So hey thinking of random versions of other characters why is DHJ’s magnificent facial hair making a cameo return role on this side of the interdimensional nosense? You can’t just grow a beard and start hunting witches on the down low on the winchesters’ turf.

I’m assuming including DHJ’s names in the credits was specifically some sort of nonsense now

specifically monsters going around looking like other things.

Maybe it was a shapeshifter Ketch punched a few weeks ago. It’s only been a few weeks since he died, you know.

Maybe it’s Asmodeus.

Maybe it’s maybelline

The plot reason for the beard had better be hilarious.

-

I like Daniella the Beret Witch. For some reason I thought she looked tons like the witch Sam and Dean were looking at on the CCTV but when I went back to look I actually spotted her in the background watching them and waiting to make her move, and she doesn’t look like the one on the CCTV at all so I guess my brain clocked her and filed her away because she was sitting around in a huge scarf, sunglasses and a beret and my brain didn’t want me to not pay attention to her in case she was useful.

-

Kevin’s weirdly pristine but still grey hoodie is making me giggle. He looks like the AU has barely touched him and Michael’s even dirty and ragged.

I’m not sure I even want to touch random morality discussions from Buckleming. Lucifer says Michael is pure evil, Kevin says “aren’t you Satan?” and Lucifer really hasn’t done anything ever to make us actually want to root for him. Like sure Michael is the much worse bigger bad in the show’s rankings but that doesn’t make Lucifer less quanitifiably evil. Michael’s way more complex because Lucifer is the big cartoon evil that Sam had to originally fear, the “what if I am actually evil” character mirror that obviously Sam isn’t but it meant Lucifer needed no character complexity other than whiny manipulative interpretations of how he’d been mistreated where he could protest he had a side. Michael is waaaay more complex just in the like 2 episodes he actually talks in season 5 because he’s “what if Dean was the big bad” and he’s not evil, he’s just 100% black and white morality rigid “good” in the sense of punishing evil, to the point of not questioning an order to kill his brother, and not even having a particularly “cool motive still murder” approach like Cain, but literally just like well okay then I guess I will kill my brother. How to make DEAN evil, or to personify the darkness that lives in him.

I mean I am massively simplifying but dear lord Buckleming if you read my notes this is the baseline direction you need to be writing these characters from and I am trying to HELP.

I am genuinely feeling like you’re mistaking “apparent fan favourite because they make a lot of memes about him, Lucifer” as “this must mean people genuinely like him because he’s Lucifer” and any possible reason I would find him interesting as a villain who was held up to just kinda exist and be himself doing his awful things contrasted to Michael who was just around existing and doing his awful things, is all just draining away down the toilet. Like you’ve got Lucifer lodged in there and you’re flushing and flushing around him >.>

Anyway I’m going to take this entire scene as 100x more ironic than it was probably originally intended to be, that Kevin is not exactly right about Michael (and lol, Michael being the Dean parallel just kinda using Kevin all the time for random spells and always having him on the hook for doing things for them) but he’s sure not wrong about Lucifer, Lucifer protesting Michael is evil because he’s mistreating him and has destroyed this planet sure isn’t WRONG but it’s not a “so therefore I must be right”

And I kind of think the level of subtlety this writing is at is that “Michael is a dick and therefore Lucifer looks better in comparison”

But that’s not how any of this works

*insert Jesus eyeroll*

-

*pats poor overworked manic AU!Kevin’s hair*

I wonder if he’s actually going to be able to do it

it would be HILARIOUS if they waste Lucifer’s grace on this

-

Hey he did it, I’m proud of you AU!Kev. He always manages to do the thing :P

Okay not good that Lucifer has just been thrown back because A: Mary is still trapped over there, I assume for the much more important emotional arc stuff to do with rescuing her especially in the parallel to getting Cas back and all this stuff for Sam’s arc and all

But UGH the writing of Lucifer is just really annoying me on so many levels and punting him back into the main SPN universe depowered and humbled by his brother, just annoys me so much.

Like I don’t know how much more less enthused I have to be about Lucifer having struggles.

Boo hoo

-

Last season Dean got mistaken for homeless after he got hit with the memory spell, and was offered cash to make him go away.

he handled it considerably better than Lucifer.

I am just gonna assume this random woman is Asmodeus.

Lucifer probably ought to go grab that cash he was offered…

-

Oh wait here’s Asmodeus, torturing some poor bloke called Karl who apparently works at the motel from last week.

I’m impressed they managed to track Jack that far, tbh

The question is, is there an actual memo that the Winchesters are camped in an old, heavily warded, impossible to map or locate MoL bunker, or is that something you only find out after you tail them for a bit? I mean Jack might not be there any more either but it would be a start :P

I feel extra skeevy about this scene because Asmodeus is being a total moron for starters by not checking Karl’s level of clued in to this, and so he’s this white plantation owner coded guy in his shiny white suit, torturing a black guy who isn’t even on the same level as him for info he doesn’t have, and could in no way be resonably expected to know. So it’s doubly cruel. Although in some respects Asmodeus’s coding makes this gratuitous violence a commentary, just like Buddy and Dave being collosal douches to women in the last few episodes was called out in many ways simply by their existence and coding as collosal douches.

Still not nice to watch on screen, especially without even more specific reference to Asmodeus’s doucheyness because the stupidity of this dialogue is not helping.

Like did the minions just bring Karl to him and say hey we tracked the Winchesters and Jack this far, he might know more?

Like…

This is the sort of basic intelligence test fail here, that they’re not over-thinking this scene in the specific details that you need to not have your main villain parade around displaying total idiocy over.

Like why the Winchesters would book into a motel under “Sam and Dean Winchester and Jack the Nephilim” and then Karl would know that and know what that means.

You can’t just drag a normy into the Hell Main Office and torture them for info about Jack when they have no clue who that is.

He literally

can shapeshift

into anything

Go to the Stampede Motel, turn into a pretty girl in a low cut top, and lean on the motel check in desk until you know what you were after.

I’m no longer impressed they found Karl, I’m AMAZED.

-

Why did they kiiiiill him

-

Lol Asmodeus is so hammy

what’s he sensing

Has he figured out Lucifer is back?

-

Meanwhile: Sam and Dean voluntarily go to a creepy cabin in the woods with a witch. This is not quite as stupid as Asmodeus was just being.

-

I am loving the plot development that David Hayden Jones has returned to the show as himself to find Rowena. Like dammit, you were a really cool character I had no interaction with but we coulda had some screen magic for all you know. You may or may not be in this episode as a surprise appearance which as Lizzy said putting MY name in the credits is the “hey it’s that guy” fuckery to distract from the fact there’s some bigger fuckery at foot (like… aside from the fact I was back to back with OSRIC FUCKING CHAU) because you don’t *just* randomly put my very recognisable name in the credits at the start of the episode with Osric unless it’s because something’s up. So heeey here I am, I’m looking for Rowena, because dangit Ruthie deserves another chance to be in this show.

-

Daniella is also really slow to realise that Sam just said she was going to be bait. It took until Dean repeated it for her to realise.

-

She’s really pretty though.

-

She starts choking like several moments before the gas hits her

-

… is that DHJ?

-

I mean we’re getting a close up on his face but I literally. Do. Not. Recognise. Him.

I remember rambling at some point in my watching notes in season 12 when his face was being particularly hilarious after I’d seen con photos of DHJ that Ketch is one of the most effective character disguises I’ve ever seen for an actor’s face. TBH it’s the same weird different face thing I get from Alex Calvert - that he’s all clean shaven and filmed as a wee nougat child in the show but he has an instagram of unrecognisable smouldering glamour shots, often with scruff. DHJ has a beard and that’s his face, and part of the Ketch look was being clean shaven and crammed in a tight collar which is an incredibly British upper class twit look, and even in other clothes later the illusion lasted… But add a beard and stop grooming his hair and he just turns into some other person entirely.

-

Ah well, Dean gets to punch DHJ with Ketch’s accent again which must be satisfying for him.

-

Did they take DHJ back to the Bunker? Really?

-

Oh he doesn’t have the tattoo

LOL he’s his “twin” “brother”… Obviously.

Yeah okay whatever you say, DHJ.

-

elizabethrobertajones  
Hey  
what if DHJ was actually Rowena

mittensmorgul  
oh god, don’t give them ideas

-

ALSO if you have an “evil twin brother” you would generally assume that this sort of thing would happen a lot and you’d try and clarify sooner? I bring up my twin like every other time I talk about myself.

Also this is a ridiculous concept I refuse to engage with

-

I mean, thematically, wowsers. Fits right in with Buddy and Dave and things that look like other things

-

ALSO DHJ has been going around torturing witches so it’s not like he’s been the good twin

-

ALSO WHY IS HE HERE?

-

Apparently he’s a hitman hunter

-

I suppose it’s kind of like Bela but I do find it really strange.

Like how does anyone even know to hire him if no one knows monsters exist? Who is pointing him at these things?

Insinuating himself into situations like Bela to get work maaay be a way to do it, like if the Winchesters showed up in town and immediately told the sheriff what was up and then offered their fee as contractors or something. Pfft.

Pfft.

-

And then he’s like “we hunters” because he’s trying to bond with them or something

-

To google!

-

It’s convenient he kept a beard his whole life

-

Oh okay Sam stole hard drives from the BMoL and is using their actual data.

-

I like the side by sides of their report cards where the prop people literally did them backwards from each other. “*More effort required!” they say about Alexander, and “Excellent work!” for Arthur.

-

Dean isn’t buying it

-

LOL they dumped Ketch’s corpse into the waste canal.

Do you want a haunted Bunker? That’s how you get a haunted Bunker.

-

Anyway Dean is like NOPE don’t believe it and Sam’s like… there’s so much proof… and then he goes in to question DHJ again and DHJ is like… you literally saw me get shot in the head last season, you don’t trust that? And Sam’s like no I had to concede that Dean had a point that we really can’t trust anything and I guess Cas did just randomly come back or something and we have horrific problems with the white men on this show coming back again for completely random reasons that make no sense so you had better bloody well actually be re-introducing Rowena into the narrative even more dramatically than the warning Billie gave about the red-headed witch that Dean probably didn’t tell me about now come to think of it, but I’d still like to see her again because we had a sort of weird thing we never really talked about going on…

-

Also are they keeping DHJ in the store room that showed up for the pencil scene but isn’t the other store room? It looks like a different part of the Bunker repurposed.

-

Sam mis-reads Ketch, maybe because he never knew him as well as Mary or even Dean saw him. DHJ is like dude I played him for a year and psychoanalysed him and his crush on Dean in multiple interviews, so trust me when I tell you all his character exposition.

The stuff about being loyal to Heaven - I mean the BMoL - and being a company man echo what Ishim said about old Cas in 12x10

-

DHJ like, I did so much character work in those interviews, and I never got a chance for Ketch to be sympathetic so let me offer some more insight on him now you have me in the worst interview chair ever.

Also, don’t go into pop culture journalism, Sam

-

“If he were here, he’d admit regret to some of the things he did to your family”

Yeah unless you have a magic twin link (well… not unlikey tbh with random ass canon pulls) you’re either Arthur Ketch or just DHJ enjoying doing interviews about Ketch to a twisted and weird level and I’m sort of gonna have to do an intervention on this for him.

-

CAS

-

NEW PLAYGROUND

-

New angel!

mittensmorgul  
dumas?  
that’s the name the superwiki has linked, but her page is blank

elizabethrobertajones  
Heh  
3 musketeers again  
first in the off-brand nougat  
now that

-

“If we had him he wouldn’t be imprisoned he’d be put to work”

SHE WANTS NEW ANGELS

I don’t freakin blame her

But Jack shouldn’t be “put to work” either - he would have to want to do it.

Awww Cas getting protective over Jack before I’m done typing that of course this means Jack would be forced to do it and the angel says “No other choice” because of course she does.

As usual heaven isn’t comic book evil but its purposes in the name of “good” are super shady. Even if Jack was pure evil himself, Heaven enslaving a powerful nephilim for its own purposes would be dodgy.

-

Btw I am still torn about Cas’s compulsion to care about Jack but on the other hand I am really enjoying Cas generally existing and being alive - and wait a minute she didn’t even ask about how he was doing that - so I’m pretty much enjoying the surface level about Cas and Jack right now. Because of course I see the good in Jack that he DOES need protecting, so however Cas ended up on this, at least he is doing the right thing and taking the right stance.

-

“Castiel, he’s not your pet. He belongs to all of us.”

-

Uhoh, Cas is probably going to get grabbed.

*surprise*

Hey he did pretty well considering he’s fighting 3 angels and is much weaker than them.

-

Oh boy, here’s Lucifer. This is gonna go great.

-

Does Cas or Lucifer need to start this with the “you’re supposed to be dead/in the AU” first?

-

Lol, Cas is the first person in this entire damn episode to actually ask a relevant question, and it’s one we already know the answer to

*waves a little flag for Cas though*

Hey and then Lucifer asks about Cas being alive, what do you know.

He then calls Cas “cowboy” and pretends like Cas wouldn’t kick his ass.

I am pretty happy about the “cowboy” thing :P

-

Lucifer has found a tan jacket somewhere, specifically one that looks like the one Jack was wearing but maybe a bit thicker, more like Cas’s new coat. He’s trying to edge in on this family and I can only assume this is not even a veiled metaphor for the douchey biological father wanting to be all interested in his son’s business.

Lucifer in a tan jacket makes me think wolf in sheep’s clothing.

-

He does, however, shelve the issue of child custody for now, and he appears to be genuinely freaked out enough about Michael to make that a priority and tell Cas about it, because if you want help against Michael, we’ve had 2 references to Team Free Will in short succession and that was a phrase coined specifically to spite Michael…

I don’t think Lucifer should be allowed in, remotely, because it’s become a family term, but the imagery is interesting anyway that he is trying to leech off the success of TFW to accomplish the goals he could never do himself. Especially because it was blatant in season 5 to everyone but him that Michael would kick his butt since he already did it once before and nothing has changed, 12x12 confirmed Michael would kill him slowly, and now meeting an AU Michael, he discovers that yep Michael sure is stronger than him, even when he was the last strong archangel left, and then Michael took that from him…

-

None of this, however, makes Lucifer sympathetic or good, just self-interested in not dying, and who is better at not dying than Cas?

I mean he wasn’t even expecting to see Cas here, I guess he was going to a heaven portal to try and get them to listen?

-

LOL Kingdom Beer sign over Cas and Lucifer having a chat in a bar.

Cas looks Weary.

“I came back from the dead to deal with THIS? Please take me back to yesterday when it was fun kinky cowboy times with Dean.”

-

I’m glad Cas isn’t remotely friendly to Lucifer and is quick to remind him about how killed he got last time they hung out. Lucifer continues to be whiny and annoying about it all, unrepentant for killing Cas over petty nonsense.

-

LOL Lucifer is like “this Michael is much more powerful”

buddy. dude. go watch 12x12 then get back to me about how whooped your butt would have been. I mean go look at that lovely painting of him whooping your butt that was in 12x12 and unrelated to the fact he had that fucking lance in the first place.

-

Anyway he’s trying to convince Cas to use his influence on Jack to get them to be the ultimate team up but they’re fundamentally incapable of doing that because they’re the 2 rival dads for Jack and blatantly symbolically being shown as that in these costumes, and that’s one of the huge thematic things.

-

Cas like “You are the Weakest Link, goodbye.”

-

I love Cas being so snarky, so maybe Lucifer being around is good in some respects, that it makes Cas this snarky because he has something to bounce off as awful and despised as Lucifer. Not even Crowley got THIS dismissive treatment, because they had emotional baggage that was of a whole different sort, whereas Cas and Lucifer have been opposite mirrors the whole time since season 4

-

Lucifer is emphasising how he and Cas are the big cosmic powers around here, with Jack. Hm…

Lol Cas is like “I’m calling my guys who deal with these things” and Lucifer bangs his head on the table in despair. I guess this is like the boy who called wolf except that instead of calling wolf he was literally going around eating all the sheep and was banned from being a shepherd for life and locked away and got out and ate more sheep and was locked away and got out and ate more sheep and got locked away and THEN came back like oh hi something’s gonna eat all our sheep.

-

Lucifer then says Cas needs him and that he needs Cas and they all need Jack.

So Um I guess “Need” is The Worst Word right now :P

-

“Jack. Your son’s name is *Jack*” *pats Cas’s hair*

Pfft themes “is he a chip off the old block?” “thankfully, no. he seems to favour the mother”

Theeeeeeeeemes

-

Cas squinting when he lies - I don’t think that’s his lying tell because he does it too much, but perhaps uncertainty. The fact he squinted so much in the reintroduction huggy scene last episode feels to me less like lying and more like no clue what was going on and how mad he had to be about his humans sacrificing for him to come back.

-

Laughing at all their labelled phones lying around permanently charging. I think this is the first proof we’ve ever seen that they have a Bobby phone bank, but I can’t imagine who would rely on the Winchesters to answer the phone when they need proof of ID :P They’re like ALWAYS being abducted or disappearing on cases.

Or dying.

-

Okay so the phones are more just for their personal IDs for the cards THEY give out and they’re just getting a call back from the motel for some reason, I suppose because Jack was with them (seriously. Dean gave the motel the name Jack? I have to assume Jack said his name before they could re-name him on the fly and so he was registered as a guest there as Jack the Nephilim because why the fuck not… Berens has a magic skill of un-fucking Buckleming canon but it seems Buckleming’s skill is fucking up poor Davy’s, in 12x13 and 12x17 and now here…)

ANYWAY jesus christ Asmodeus is stupid. “Evil Colonel Sanders” literally walked in and abducted Karl in person which means that his stupid ass questions weren’t even because his minions brought him the guy and presented him in an idiotic way, but our shapeshifting villain wandered in and took Karl, himself in person with his own freaking face that the Winchesters KNEW and is extremely memorable, and took his prize.

…

DHJ better turn out to be Asmodeus even though I think their screentime overlapped and this makes no freaking sense since he has some established history wandering around attacking witches before they caught up with him.

-

I’d rather have a time plothole than a stupid plothole :P

-

Anyway DHJ is hanging out with them in the library eating a sandwich because… um

reasons?

At least he’s in chains.

-

Oh my god I said that sarcastically moments before Sam said it sincerely and then pointed out there’s no bathroom in the armoury

what the fuck

-

Like I said up top: as stupid as the villain is, your main characters have to be about as dumb as they are, either only just enough to outwit them, or more stupid if they get outwitted…

Poor Sammy, he was having such a fantastic season

-

Dean just straight up pretends Mary is phone when DHJ asks because why the heck would you monologue your sad life story to the bad guy, and give him emotional leverage over you? Especially when he ASKS because “Alexander” should have no knowledge of Mary or care about her, but then he also shouldn’t know the DHJ interview details of Ketch’s inner life.

-

YAY Dean and Cas are talking and Dean phoned Cas probably just to hear a sane voice because Cas is managing to weave around being Buckleminged, so far, possibly just because he was not in the opening half of the episode, and then this was a really important conversation they couldn’t fuck up so probably got supervised.

-

elizabethrobertajones  
tee hee Cas standing by the gents to take a call from Dean  
wait  
hang on  
…  
I’m not even being jokey I literally just had that moment in the chat with you :P  
*rewinds*  
Longing retcon Confirmed  
Oh dear that is hilarious  
I don’t know if that’s the moment you wanted me to see or not but I’m delighted :P

elizabethrobertajones  
Cas was standing away from Lucifer ready to take Dean’s phone call and had to have walked off up to a minute before he called, but most likely in that time when Dean was like UGH I need to talk to Cas and hear the one sane voice in this episode  
and Cas was like… Brb I… have to use… the 'Gents’  
and got up and wandered off to take the call  
eat it, 12x10 and that “where’s my phone” moment  
I mean Buckleming introduced it to fill a plothole  
so why should they not use it to cover more plotholes at their leisure

… did Speight know? I mean he coulda been like what the heckeroo, and added Cas getting the call and legging it from the table.

-

The only other option I can think of is Cas decided he may as well just get up to “go pee” because Lucifer is so annoying that pretending he needs to go to the loo buys him 5 minutes to let his migraine subside.

-

Also what the fuck DHJ was wandering around the bunker so he could use the bathroom. I am confused. Is this actually like… being hinted at. Like, “hey children, please remember who does and doesn’t need to use the bathroom in this episode”

-

Omg

Cas like “I would *like* to see you too” is he literally pretending he and Dean were canoodling on the phone as a cover?

-

I hate everything

-

Anyway need/want blah blah I have been over that a lot lately :P Cas is using his DESIRE to see Dean to get help, by Lucifer saying he NEEDS Cas.

-

“Smooth was never your strong suit” oh my god Lucifer also thought Cas was pretending to be flirty too what is going on

why has this episode confirmed all the headcanons about Cas being the most shittiest phone sex guy ever

of all the things.

why.

-

DHJ wants to go because he misses being in on the action with the guys

-

Like. No, go take your sandwich and sit down.

-

Dean is sad about Cas always getting killed by Lucifer and stuff when he does stupid things.

-

Cas’s “ugh stop talking Lucifer” face is a whole layer more existential misery than dealing with Crowley… I think he was secretly fond of Crowley or at least enjoyed hating him, whereas Lucifer is just EXHAUSTING.

He’s needling Cas for attention.

-

LOL randomly Asmodeus as if Cas’s headache wasn’t bad enough, now we got thunder and lightning and very very frightening…

Pfft.

-

bahahaha Lucifer called Asmodeus the dim bulb

I mean he’s not wrong, Asmodeus has been completely idiotic all episode. And of course, narratively, his “evil plans” are just self-interest which will endanger the entire world because even if Lucifer is a twat, he has a point about the coming danger of Michael, and Asmodeus just refuses to see the danger, which is all kinds of various political commentary, and using his era aesthetic to say this kind of thinking is such a throwback…

-

I think this might be the most confused Cas has ever been about if he should stab someone or not - if he actually WANTS to defend Lucifer. Not really, but Asmodeus seems like a bigger problem because at least Lucifer isn’t trying to kill him.

-

I hope this just randomly gets Asmodeus killed.

Or Lucifer

-

Asmodeus just called Lucifer “screwable”… do they even know what they said? :P

-

EEEP there was a Margiekugel sign and it just flickered off

-

“Nick’s bar” pfft because Lucifer?

-

It seems like Sam and Dean are too late and Asmodeus already made off with everyone?

I hope Cas is okay

being held captive by that idiot seems like a fate worse than death. You’re going to get villain monologues all day.

-

Anyway fight fight fight

-

Good fight.

-

Where did DHJ even come from?

-

that was a ridiculous nonsense about how he escaped. I also will die if he took Dorothy’s bike and not his own left stashed there. Also he nodded at Dean like hey you didn’t cavity search me like you should have, which… Is he actually Ketch?

-

He’s actually Ketch

Of course that means Dean knows him very well and trusted his gut instinct on knowing Ketch to prove that he was not, in fact, the actor David Hayden Jones, chillaxing on set and being weirdly cheerful about being beaten up by the Winchesters.

-

Pfft he used Rowena’s charm to get alive again

-

Well she better be fine if they’re gonna use her like this.

-

“Is she?”

-

LOL Ketch ninja’d out of there

Oh good it wasn’t Dorothy’s bike

Considering how they use Rowena, DON’T use Mary, etc I’d have taken Dorothy’s bike as a personal insult. I guess Ketch rode his over to the Bunker before 12x22.

-

I mean at least this means Ketch remembers he got shot and then also he revived in a sewer where he belonged because he is garbage.

-

Wait. He set up this whole thing in like a month or so TOPS since he got shot? If he’s been chasing witches has he even had TIME for a side business?

-

Oh boy, Asmodeus using Cas’s voice to talk to Dean.

BAD HELLO DEAN.

That “see you soon” is also way too cheerful. It should be as much of a tip off as Cas begging Dean to come help him in the previous call.

-

I hope Dean sees through it.

Though it’s so Buckleming-y I don’t think people should be mad if he doesn’t because this was them doing a smart!Dean episode.

-

PFFT of course they team up - colonialism from all sorts of fun angles!! The ultimate trashy white guys in suits team up.

-

Thanks Buckleming!

-

Man, I need a whole pot of detox tea now. I don’t even have closing thoughts.


	8. 13x08

You guys, I literally can’t cope with Sam dressing like this much longer. I am being personally attacked. WHo EVEN SELLS ORANGE PLAID.

expectations: best case scenario, some literally unholy lovechild of 7x20 and 12x12.

Heists mean side characters and good heists mean fun side characters. From the promo stuff it looks like we have a couple of quirky side characters, who aesthetically vaguely reminded me of the Doctor Who bank heist episode from the Clara period of the show, just because quirky side characters to bolster a heist episode. It’s probably quite easy to beat the mood and justification of ridiculousness from Doctor Who, especially peak Moffatt era nonsense, out of the water, but this is Glynn so I’m expecting good characters, good characterisation, but pooossibly some random plot hole or some sort of back and forth of characters/scenes that’s hard to follow that doesn’t necessarily hurt the episode but does make it a headache later :P

_[note with hindsight: *just hands Glynn a trophy for it and walks off*]_

It’s essentially the same thing you forgive under Dabb vs cars (aka not a problem unless you make it one), but it doesn’t really lend itself to writing a heist either so this is in no way the same level of “Uhoh” as a Buckleming episode but it is a hmmm I hope people aren’t arguing in circles about some way the plot worked and ignoring the good stuff when I get online comment :P

I wasn’t sure how this fit into the overall picture of wtf the demons were up to before yesterday, but with the promo scene with Bart, selling him as essentially the new (I mean… potentially since season 6) king of the crossroads but maybe not styling himself that way, we may or may not get another overt canon dive like 12x12 showed us how Crowley got his upgrade, to tell us how long this guy has been around behind the scenes (and SENSIBLY staying off the Winchesters’ radar), but this character very literally is Crowley2.0 as people have been calling him in the sense that he is what Crowley was when we met him both with the actual job title AND narratively, and in this case probably very content with his job as it is especially with the danger at the very top, and I hope for his sake he doesn’t get ambitious, because it would be great to have a character like this survive just for story stability - yeah even though he’s another white dude might as well just lump it unless this episode immediately replaces him with someone better but intent on doing the *exact same* job properly - just to have some stability and a second player in the Hell storyline. Especially if they maintain an uneasy relationship with him that he really is the last resort for help Crowley really wasn’t since like season 10.

It establishes another position of power in Hell’s hierarchy and it’s a fairly safe job where a smart demon can accrue a lot of power - Crowley was shown to have a whole bunch of resources and a lot of it predating becoming King of Hell, specifically because it was stuff gathered as a crossroads demon/through controlling that flow of trade. TBH it’s better placed than whoever is trying to lead the demons because they have all the resources. I think in 11x23 Crowley said his minions took everything and ran? This dude would be one of the key placed people to do that because he has all the stuff and connections to all the souls collected in deals. Whether that comes up or not I’m just going to assume he did :P

Anyway in the story it creates another character where we basically already know everything about how they function, because Crowley, both on a random world building and originally how Crowley was in the narrative sort of level. It sucks he’s getting replaced on a “I did actually quite like him most days” level, and it’s definitely a “get 2 people to do the same job 1 man was doing” thing but then the writing had been so bad to Crowley for a couple of years since they ran out of things for him to do that maybe stripping back to basics to get the narrative role he used to offer without all the baggage is sensible >.> If a character takes on so much of a life of their own they can’t do the stuff they used to offer without it being an issue like removing any tension about giving them magic things they couldn’t obtain themselves, or offering sincere opposition and attempts to kill them from the throne of Hell, then unfortunately for Crowley, this is a great choice. Asmodeus represents all the shit I didn’t like that they kept making Crowley do, Bart represents the side of Crowley introduced by Edlund and maintained at least until Edlund left the show (Crowley was his baby even more than Cas was - he just dipped in to write the best Cas episodes but he introduced and pushed Crowley as a character… funnily enough at the end of season 8 both their natures were changed dramatically and permanently). Based on 1 promo scene, I have to admit, Bart is all the bits of Crowley I liked best, while coming across as a bit of a cheap knock off in the way he tries to butter up to the Winchesters, a bit too knowing, a bit too under-informed, while Crowley ran loops around them just in their opening conversation. 

-

OMG it’s sleeting so I am going to roll the dice and get a lift to yoga from the same person who plain forgot to pick my mum up and take her wherever they were going for about 2 hours last week when I wisely decided to get the bus. See now I have extra time, the episode is downloaded, but… I don’t have enough time. Nooo way :P

-

Other generic pre-ep thoughts: this concept is goofy but I seriously don’t trust it to stay that way because you never trust this show to stay that way. We haven’t seen Asmodeus in a non-BL episode and while he is essentially their pet character he’s still plot relevant. I’m not exactly on the side of “we HAVE to get Casmodeus before this is all said and done” as in I’d really love it but it seems so easy to bungle in a BL episode. On the other hand, just because Cas is locked up doesn’t mean we can’t see Misha in an episode while this state of affairs continues (and just because there’s no spoilers doesn’t mean it’s not happening) and Glynn having a crack at Casmodeus sounds like a perfect set up for the kind of stuff we’d want to see out of it, and be a curveball to throw in here.

I’m just going to assume we’re not seeing Mary again for a while and this is all set in the main universe.

I assume Jack isn’t in the episode but we may or may not get a lead on him at the end, or else be left on “well we have a lead/half a lead on him” because I sort of feel like if he literally breaks the universe next episode after this he’ll be pretty easy to find again :P

This may all be some way to force some conversations about how Dean and Sam feel about Jack on the other side of the turning point, especially if it’s our last chance for them to be in the limelight until the other side of Wayward Sisters midseason fun. And if Jack has broken the universe next episode, we need to have their current stances laid out before they go rushing in to deal with that. So this could be a fairly light episode for character discussion.

-

HI back from yoga

the recap immediately gets into Jack stuff so hey maybe he is in the episode, maybe it’s just explaining better why he is not in this episode because the reason why NOT is just as important.

Then just way too much having to recap last episode to get us up to date on what Sam and Dean have been through with all that. I like that they included that Ketch said he was his own twin considering Dean says “twinsies” in the promo scene, as, of course, this may be a really important theme. Twins that aren’t actually twins. Cas and the Empty, Ketch and “Alexander”, Dean and Crowley2.0, Dean being fed up of things that look like other things and the shapeshifter & ghoul…

-

Anyway. “NOW” - Cambridge, England. Okay then. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure. *rubs a Union Jack on it to make it more British*

This is your weekly reminder to read these notes in a shrill British accent.

Whoever this is outside looks like she’s up to something.

This mueseum:

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130991708770/justanotheridijiton-jerry-wanek-on-supernatural>

I’m not gonna read into that immediately because its been completely dressed up for the vampire!Dean episode and it’s been polished up for this episode. But we get a long look at the stained glass roof and that was a centrepiece for the vamp episode.

-

*she continues to be up to something*

-

Wow, great security. Bust open a door and no alarms go off? It’s the 2nd door that doesn’t work, after Dean failed to get the automatic door to open for him in 13x05.

-

Mmmm drawers of old scrolls and spooooky writing.

-

Just… shove it in your handbag.

-

Oh yep she’s a demon, that’s surprising.

-

This is a great way to do a robbery, tbh. Ethics about possession aside, you can burn a vessel and let them take whatever physical damage or legal ramifications of being found in the room where something was stolen, but if you run into problems, just possess the next person. Especially someone with clearance, if you couldn’t find them earlier…

I suppose her not being able to open the door earlier was an omen for her not having all the information - not knowing that Bart was going to stab her as soon as he had what he wanted from her, and that she wasn’t working for Asmodeus’s whim at all, but Bart was going rogue with it. This is another suggestion of the dramatic irony at work - Dean couldn’t open the door, he had no faith, and it seemed like to HIM that no one was helping him. But of course Cas had already come back, the automatic door had opened in that sense, but he didn’t know so he’s encountering this block. This demon powers through it as well without setting off any alarm bells and she should have had some about the whole double cross coming. Likewise, Dean’s surprised by Cas’s return.

Bart establishes himself as a Crowley-alike instantly, by having a random demon minion to double cross, and to go to the Winchesters. He already has Dean on speed dial which means his number must get circulated among the demons, or Bart has sought it out already from their sources. Whether he’s had it a while and just decided to pounce…

I guess it’s also like the opposite of Cas phoning him and we don’t hear that side of the conversation - I mean we hear Dean on the phone here, but we’re staying on Bart’s side of the camera, and he’s enticing him in with what he needs to find Jack. Again, more dark mirrors of stuff that’s already happened… Dean getting a lot of phonecalls he needs to follow his faith on.

-

Dean immediately on screen in his bi plaid doing that thing with the gun that’s… suggestive. Sitting there obessesively cleaning his gun.

Sam emerges, in a shirt that is going to be a Problem.

*mutes Sam*

-

Sam was the one who talked to Cas. I wonder if Asmodeus phoned Sam up rather than the other way around. Like, don’t be suspicious, just check in every day and see how they’re doing… Just phone one of the brothers at random.

Anyway we already know, of course, that it’s not Cas, and here we are with more dramatic irony, the same problem as Casifer before they knew, and it’s underlined by Sam being the one to talk to Casmodeus instead of Dean. Fewer opportunities based on what we see on screen for Dean to work it out.

-

And now we see the other side of the phonecall, tracking back in time to show us the same thing over again, but now we have Dean’s POV on it too and he’s not at this disadvantage, at least, with the way it’s all been set up. He gets to snark back etc although Bart has the right word to stop Dean hanging up on him.

I do like the snark about Hell street locations :P

Sam’s like “a demon!” whispered even though it’s obvious and I think Dean clued into it which means once again Sam’s being the GA, or a filter for them, and even though he says it silently, he’s still spelling out what he thinks it is when it’s blatantly obvious to us what it is as we watched the cold open and his side of the start of the phone call already.

-

“if I had a way to find *your boy*” - that parenting theme again, and he’s addressing it to Dean since that’s who he thinks he’s solely on the phone to.

-

We get a look at a ton of shop fronts and I suppose they’re all made up?

The Smile Diner is already incongruously happy - more irony, just that it’s all smiles for what would be an understandably tense meeting.

Anyway: “BANGTOWN beauty & barber” “Fine art bartending LEARN TO BARTEND”, a restaurant…

A Chinese-owned phone shop “Ketaiya” which I suppose is selling phones, as it says “iphone8.8” in the window but also would fit an idea of calling home, as shops like this exist for most immigrant populations, as a place where they can make cheap phonecalls home. In this part of the country I’m most used to seeing Arabic, Slavic or Eastern European versions of this but I assume it’s the same deal. We get cage imagery over the front of this shop, obviously as protection for it as it has a bunch of iphones in it, but the idea that Cas can’t call them because he’s in prison is right there, and it makes him the lil green mascot in the window.

And then the smile cafe is the next thing along. :)

-

“He could work for Asmodeus” smart, but wrong *as far as we know*, and Sam is like “what if he’s telling the truth”, so this scepticism seems to be flipping their roles from last episode, buuut on the other hand Dean is being defensive and practical and Sam is again entertaining things villains tell them.

“After Crowley I told myself no more demons” it STILL sounds like bitter but civil exes. And you’d bet that “after Crowley” is not “in the last month since he died” but “since that time we had a wild elopement”

but hanging a lampshade on exactly what Bart is doing for them in the narrative, and of course that Dean is going to be predisposed to see him as a Crowley2.0 exactly as we do, so that adds even more depth to the promo scene.

Sam like “you said we need a miracle, maybe this is it” and then Dean calling out that demons don’t give miracles - they give deals they can SELL as miracles. Who of the two of you has been jerked around more by demon deals? Oh yeah the one of you who sold your soul because your father’s demon deal spiritually broke you already. (I mean yeah Sam has had it PLENTY hard in other ways but Dean and crossroads demons is a very different story to Sam)

“Let’s hear the guy out.” “And after that we kill him.”

-

I continue to be enraged that Dean is wearing sensible black and at least MUTED purples and Sam’s wearing the orange jacket and a plaid with like, hazard day glo orange strips sewn into it.

-

:) Smile Diner :)

it’s horrifying, but it has homemade burgers. I have no clue if this is something they scouted out or repainted but the brickwork having yellow lines is like WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING in film language, like DO NOT ENTER police tape coding. IRL it would be whimsical, especially with all the smilies. On screen, it it horrifying. There’s red signage and green neon boxing the window I think they’re gonna sit in, and red and green are the poison codependency colours I think? According to Zerbe? I don’t know if that’s the dynamic here but it’s certainly not GOOD, especially boxed in by yellow and black hazard warnings.

-

There’s a pretty bridge and a sunset/rise in the sign. It’s incongruous to the smile theme at least because it doesn’t directly relate to smiling, and is just a random image. I would assume it’s symbolic in some way… Cas is of course the sun, this does mimic the Gas n Sip logo (especially as it has a maroon version), and the road seems to lead away from the sun across the bridge. They’re not helping Cas going in here, that’s for sure :P

-

Lots of potted plants in here, and one behind Bart.

-

“The famous Winchesters!” “Some random demon.” Dean is in a power play with him and now they’re face to face rather than at a disadvantage over the phone, he’s gonna win this one. Watch.

Bart offers a nickname to them, which could be a power play to say hey I’m so powerful we get on nickname terms because I allow you and you should be grateful or whatever, but his name sounds like an old powerful demon name (he and Asmodeus both have old school “us” endings to their names) and so he’s actually neutering the part that makes his name sound powerful and impressive. He may be preempting Dean’s infamous nicknaming habit, but Dean does it to be dismissive or to humanise. And he’s not gonna get the latter treatment :P

Again, offering them to sit and then trying to get Dean on his side with pie - gesture after gesture of power, being the one in control, and knowing them, and the pie is the first sign he’s done his Winchester Homework, which bad guys notoriously get wrong or misread. In this case, he’s got Dean down as the stupid dumb muscle who can be bribed with pie, and I assume missing aaall the complexity of why demons fear him so much.

He labels Dean a “disrupter” when Dean has been tasked with maintaining the natural order. Dean has only ever tried to STOP bad stuff happening, and though he’s ACCIDENTALLY helped unleash a bunch of stuff, it’s never been because he WANTS to. He’s helped cause a lot of the disruption in Hell with his actions, but that’s because Hell is bad and he wants to stop it doing bad things. In general Dean’s big victories have been to try and secure the natural order staying as it is, with his two biggest victories being Swan Song and settling things with God and Amara.

-

I love how the framing here has all that green light behind the Winchesters, but aside from a line of green behind Bart’s head, he’s got this innocent white flowery wall and some roses behind him.

-

Again, Sam snatches up the spell, Dean doubts immediately, I guess if not that the spell is real that why a demon would just GIVE it to him without ulterior motives. Just be upfront about the ulterior motives :P

-

He re-introduces himself as first a cross-roads demon and then THE cross-roads demon, a clarification again. He doesn’t say king of the crossroads, but he does smirk at Dean, and says helping people is what he does… Yeah, to a degree. They have to PAY for it. But it’s that smarmy salesman charm, this time mixed with someone who looks like a thug boss, the sort who dresses nice but has goons.

-

I mean we KNOW he does, but his look is very typical of nice suit, close-cropped hair, and just generally heavy set like he’s used to being intimidating more than relying on his words, when you go to cast this guy.

-

Dean says they don’t listen to/help demons, just kill them, and for one thing Bart’s got to know about Crowley, but he says “How Dean of you” like he knows Dean is the one who just threatens to/will kill demons and not think about it. I mean Dean could be showing he’s learned from experience. But of course then, the great meta about him negging Dean, by switching focus to Sam, who’s already been established even before they get in the diner that he’s going to be more willing to listen, that he’s the “smart one” aka the one more likely to make a bad decision by listening to people he shouldn’t while trying to help.

-

And, of course, Dean eats his pie, and we already made the parallels to other scenes like this in diners, but Ishim stands out the most, throwing money at Dean to shut up and buy himself some pie. In this case the pie is already here, and Dean’s allowed to be suspicious but also eat the pie because hey, it’s here.

Bart treated Dean like he was the stupid pie guy so Dean, who doesn’t trust him an inch, acts like the stupid pie guy, while not giving any ground. He is not bribed by the pie, but Sam can’t believe Dean’s eating it.

There’s a world of metaphor there about Dean and seduction. Because of course Bart came on strong to Dean, but Dean wasn’t buying that either, the coded second layer of the conversation about him being Crowley2.0 and thinking maybe he can find a way to unlock Dean’s interest in dudes… by offering pie of course. Doesn’t work like that, you have to earn it. And the coming on too strong is the first weakness he has in not measuring up to Crowley, despite how it all seems like he has the ~perfect plan~ in place.

-

They’re STIIIILL in these shirts

-

Wow, that’s some old Biblical stuff. Guess that explains why Dabb tweeted that, pretty quickly. I don’t know much about the Queen of Shiba but the idea she’s a nephilim is kind of amusing.

I’ll have to leave that to the experts but anyway, more douchey guys, although this time King Solomon is keeping tabs on someone like a dick, so um. Welcome to the club of symbolism this part of the season? I assume this is the same guy from the Song of Solomon that we saw Jack glance at in 13x02, and it’s more romantic stuff as well.

-

Sam’s like “Jack is out there in the world, and he’s alone and he’s scared and he’s dangerous”, which is exactly Dean’s stance from 13x01 saying better to keep Jack in the Bunker with them so the only people he’d hurt are them. Yes Sam still seems to care about Jack, but he is also now valuing him practically, and seeing he’s dangerous, and it’s caused this flip in his attitude to one mirroring Dean’s but obviously with much less hate and upset about what happened to Cas etc

-

Heist HQ!

-

Quirky random demons! Hat and headphone demons.

-

Hahahah they’re called Smash and Grab. Smash has flowery DMs so I love her. Grab is wearing that hat voluntarily so I am not so sure about him at all.

-

PS: in America has flipping the bird with 2 fingers become a thing or was that a peace sign? When I was a young'un I was told that you always had to do peace signs palm out because showing the back of your hand with the exact same gesture was as bad/worse than giving someone the finger.

-

Is Smash human? Since he said Grab is a demon that leaves an empty space over what she is.

-

Lol, Dean realising it’s a heist. “What is this, a heist? Hold on, is this a heist?”

-

Hahahahahha his favourite My Little Pony… Come on Dean, you kept the little pony you cut off that car in 7x06. You literally can not throw stones in this house.

-

Luther Shrike looks like if he was on UK TV he’d be played by the guy who played Walder Frey (David Bradley).

There’s some stuff on the board that looks like the Sumerian(?) that Kevin translated the angel tablet into. Since we already had Kevin back on screen, it seems superfluous to mention, but it gives me a 4 in a row for mentioning Kevin in an episode this season so BINGO and more dramatic irony that Sam and Dean don’t know he’s responsible for Lucifer coming back, or, indeed, that Lucifer is back.

(With a bonus grumble from me that it’s a reminder, in this season about a nephilim, that we still don’t know what the angel fall spell’s specific wording was)

-

Oh boy the “hell and back” thing. Ouch. So we’re apparently delving THIS now? Is this penance for 11x10 and Dean not seeming too bothered to go back down there aside from token nervousness about the whole thing in the acting? Anyway getting flashbacks to that out of the blue… Look I am a smol sensitive Dean girl you can’t just throw that at me. D:

It’s interesting the perhaps king of the crossroads can’t swing this with a random soul. I would assume it’s specifically blood of someone CONDEMNED to Hell and saved/brought back. And woah I have it paused right after the flashback to collect myself, but either this has to get a Cas mention or it’s one heck of an empty space in the story that Cas saved Dean and is the reason he’s viable for this.

And lol lol lol lol see above like THREE PARAGRAPHS AGO I am never ever going to be over the angel fall spell and the fact it required grace in such… suspicious… circumstances of nephilim and cupids, and the whole theme of clarification, and how we have these such specific spells - virgin blood in 12x22, archangel grace last episode, and human who has been to hell and back now…

I’m just saying, I’m gonna be on my deathbed when I’m 150 like “the angel fall spell needed the grace of an angel in love with a human, come fight me, Carver” and then I give up the ghost just so I can go beat him up in the afterlife.

-

Bart beams at Dean, wanting his blood. Dean offers it up just to get this over and done with, but he says, no, straight from the tap and anyway you two are extremely competent in a weird crisis, why the heck would I not exploit that I need your manpower for this?

-

Shrike is human who has been to hell and back - obviously a dark Dean mirror because apparently he’s a sadist and murderer, and Dean’s entire thing is whether he’s a killer or not for doing this job he does and I have gifsets and meta blahing on and on about that but yeah basically 2x03 set up that for Dean about how you do the job because you like/need killing or you do it to save people, and his torturer arc, and his Mark of Cain/demon descent… Nuff said for now.

-

UGH so Sam pulls Dean aside and says, “we want that spell - we NEED that spell” which is a huge clarification, and literally the want/need theme you are probably aware I bang on about a weeeeeeeeeeeee little bit. In general it’s the “use your words” theme which does not harm Sam for the reminder but also is a huge Destiel theme because the need/want thing is from the crypt scene/10x19 with the call out on the crypt scene from Dean’s subconscious and the ongoing issue of whether Cas feels needed or wanted, with the fact he feels “needed” called out in OH WAIT 13x04, aka last time out for Glynn… the fact the clarification is coming now in the other direction is because this is a Sam thing anyways, and - UGH I have it paused with him on screen and he seems to have an even worse shirt on? - it’s not about Destiel subtext for him it’s just using your words and in general bolstering the presence of the theme. Of course they don’t just want the spell for kicks, they have a serious reason for needing it. In fact Sam’s concern about Jack going from emotional concern for Jack himself to seeing Jack as a dangerous crisis is encapsulated in turning a desire into an obligation.

-

“He’ll never see us coming”

“they’re coming”

More dramatic irony, immediately showing us that on the other side of the story the bad guy has more information than they think he does, and that they aren’t going to have it as easy as they think. That Bart has already been made as a traitor and that Asmodeus knows his next move will be exactly this.

Asmodeus may not even be *on screen* in this episode and he’s being written as more intelligent than he has been in both Buckleming episodes, which is super unfortunate that he’s supposed to be an intelligent character and we have to judge the characterisation of these unfortunates who are main BL property off their depiction in OTHER episodes…

-

And yeah Shrike may chat with demons but he has demon traps, exorcisms memorised and he toes the line of a horrible human being but not demonic himself, but such a hair’s breadth away that demons and demon interactions and generally knowing wtf is going on with demons is just his life.

-

He has a really pretty grate which I think is specifically in the hall so that he can exorcise demons out through it. It probably goes straight to Hell

-

His windows also have bars on them which look like random jumble to an unfamiliar eye but are of course iron warding

-

I think he also has grapevines. He lives on a vineyard with barbed wire and demon traps on the gates.

The metalwork is the coolest thing in this episode and this episode is not half bad so far

-

Oh my god Dean called out poor Smash for her amazing boots and called her “Winona” - she DOES bear a passing resemblance, but hey leave the boots alone.

Anyway that moment just to show they’re top and tail under a blanket in the back of the Impala which is pretty funny to me - I’m never sure you can actually fit anyone in there like that but they want to prove me wrong.

-

I’m like 1000% sure Sam’s ruse doesn’t work, because Shrike knows they’re coming but he’s let in anyway because why not. Let’s have some fun. Interesting that Sam’s the one made to do this. Having to lie and we already KNOW he’s been caught out.

-

Anyway more focus on the boots… 3 times and I’m super worried we’re gonna have to identify some remains by the flowery boots >.>

Or more positively it could be used to fuck with us in some way

-

“Dean? Don’t get dead.” “you too.” Aw.

Is Grab in the trunk of the car?

-

Iron warded door. Yeah, that’s normal.

-

For these guests, the rug is pulled back, the demon trap is plain to see on the floor. We see Sam from above, like he’s being watched.

Shrike’s front room/office is like Metatron’s desk? I swear he had that lamp. Cuthbert’s house… I swear that’s Bobby’s wallpaper or one in a similar hue with appropriately similar patterns to at least make a sort of sense of familiarity.

-

Awww Dean and Smash. He calls her weird but then spots she’s drinking the delightful sounding does what it says on the tin NERVE DAMAGE, and then he says he used to live on it as a kid, despite its illegal amounts of caffeine.

Ew and she’s getting it expired on ebay.

Dean, she may be bonding with you, but don’t drink it. It’s literally called Nerve Damage.

Welp

he’s gonna be bouncing off the walls after 1 sip

-

OH they have to summon Grab I guess?

-

“Cool.”

Hahahaha

Dean’s babysitting the weirdoes.

-

Heh, calls Dean “chief”

-

HAHAHAHA Smash told Grab off screen that Dean was just a pretty face :P

-

WHOOPS looks like Dean just got puppeted by his own blood. Like a couple of weeks ago or something I was writing about a worst case scenario for Jack’s powers being that they completely overwhelm him and he’s like, inside waiting to be busted out, perhaps as a conclusion of the crypt scene/swan song repetitions from an external evil possessing and controlling to an internal force making it happen - a slow process but it really has switched, and it has been a fairly smooth slope down :D

-

Also that was hilarious. Poor Dean.

-

Dean’s being poisoned with NERVE DAMAGE and Sam’s being poisoned with homemade gin. If that’s what it really is.

-

Hahahahahah Sam picking up a basilisk fang. We’ve all seen Harry Potter

-

LOL Sam knows random knowledge about basilisks and gorgons. Of course it’s a test, and Shrike would know what it was, but good on Sam for recognising it. I watched Tall Tales so recently I’m still giggling about him recognising a crocodile belly scale, but now I just think Sam has an affinity for identifying the weirder monsters. He must have read a load of junk about them in the MoL bunker.

His persona as the collector guy wanting to sell to Shrike is basically Sam but with a bit more nervous bluster, which might be explained by knowing how dangerous this guy is and that Sam is having to pretend. He’s not even wearing clothes as a get up here.

-

OH BOY Sam’s big gambit is Ruby’s knife… I remember in my 8x02 watching notes (hi Dabb) I was amused that they kind of forget that that knife is one of the most valuable things they own and they just dropped it in the weapon bin with a warning, rather than considering even trading it for the tablet or whatever even as a ruse… Just the idea they go around laden with magical artefacts that help them all the time like this which would actually be priceless to collectors - like in 12x06 Asa having an angel blade on blue felt in a glass case.

I don’t think there’s been a strong bias about which one of them has an angel blade and which one still uses this knife in fights since Carver era, but Dean took it to Purgatory, while Sam seemed to have more consistent possession of it for a while, Dean was the one who wrangled it from Ruby in 3x16 and sort of formally took ownership of it on behalf of the Winchesters.

Given the emotional background to this season of Sam’s powers being explored through Jack, though, it is interesting (since they have enough angel blades they could just swap to using them all the time instead of this knife, which is a relic of Sam’s darkest times) to just give it up, but quite aside from its worth to the right market, it has an enormous emotional weight of the season 3-4-5 drama for the Winchesters, and remembering it as Ruby’s knife ties it to Sam. He still uses her knife and keeps her memory close, perhaps just as a reminder. But that weight is there and bringing it up is a reminder of all that, because so often we just see it as a tool, but this is asking us to stop and CONSIDER what that knife actually means, how much it’s worth, and how even though they could stop using it these days, they don’t, but what it would mean to Sam to give it up.

-

Dean reeeally not getting along with Grab. Who, of course, is the demon in this mix. The fact Smash is not a demon is only brought up in that scene where Dean is talking about her working with demons - it’s taken for granted that she’s human and perhaps that is the default, but not when you’re expecting a room full of demons as we might be when meeting them. So. More empty space fill in the blanks, use context and people using or not using definitions to not be surprised that she’s human.

-

Anyway Grab calls Sam stupid and Dean gets so angry he stops and turns around even though the spell’s been dragging him along so there’s a ridic Swan Song mirror for the collection - while “puppeted” by the spell, “defensiveness” of his brother halts Dean’s progress…

Aaaand he’s off again. Not enough? :P

-

Hey creepy underground cellars. That’s never bad.

-

LOL Dean gets called HANDPUPPET

Mr Fizzles can tell when you’re being a liaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

-

“I will kill you.” “I bet you say that to all the girls.” Awww and here was I thinking Dean wouldn’t get flirted with any more this episode.

That was literally from the Crowley handbook - 9x10/9x11 made a huge point out of it.

-

This murder cellar connects to 12x01, 12x12, and 12x20, with the cellars being where Sam was kept and the twig people were made, and 12x12 for the basement Ramiel kept his shit in. Crossing them all over into this is super fun.

I guess this is where Smash does her thing?

-

GREAT door.

I hope that thing doesn’t bite

-

It almost certainly bites

-

Oooh Shrike thinks Sam is a demon.

He didn’t see him not get stuck in the demon trap out in the hall.

He has some of the info but not ALL of the info - in this way, while Bart sent them to deal with curveballs, Sam has turned out to be the curveball instead.

-

Ow that’s a big hole to blow in the books, that were nearly Sam.

He conveniently slides back to his knife.

-

On the other hand re: curveballs, if Shrike thinks he’s a demon, that shotgun blast wouldn’t have killed a demon but it will kill a Sam.

-

Sam just goes and stabs the dude.

-

“As long as I’m on my property I can’t die.”

Well that’s annoyingly cheaty

I wonder if it’s symbolic of something but I can’t instantly link it to anything so I have to move on.

There’s something very like the Cain stuff with Dean in 9x11 between Sam and this guy, especially as they matched up as equals in knowledge about gorgons or whatever earlier.

-

MAW

-

DEAN LOOKS INTO THE MAW

-

Dean does not like spiders.

-

Hard same.

Why is he always so relatable

-

I’m cackling so much at his reluctance to put his hand in there. It’s like the not wanting to go in the hole in 13x06 but so much funnier because… spiders.

There was an eel tank at the local aquarium when I was a kid which had a game EMBEDDED in the side of the eel tank to put your hand in and feel what an eel feels like.

I’m having, like. PTSD flashbacks to this and the Tiger Head in the museum which terrified the living daylights out of us as children and we wouldn’t even go past it because it looked so fierce with its big open mouth

this is literally combining two of The Most Horrifying Things about my childhood into one

-

Plus biting for blood = needles to draw blood which is a rather more recent thing what with recently coming down with a mystery chronic illness and spending 2 years fishing around for a diagnosis via endless blood drawing, so put that one on the list

-

I believe in you, Dean. You’re stronger than me.

He’s stronger than me

-

I love him more than I have ever loved him in this exact moment

-

He had to account for the fact that Shrike might regularly go in here so of course it won’t take YOUR HAND or something.

Of course it’s a massive suspense thing for a teeny weeny pinprick. Of course.

This is like the dead opposite of the Werther Box - it’s just a key for the lock, not like… the entire murderous thing Cuthbert designed

-

NINJA reflexes to save Smash there

-

Bye Grab. You were a dick.

-

OH NOES Shrike is here, with the demon knife, covered in blood. That’s not worrying for Dean to see AT ALL.

-

Smash just legs it.

Awww she seemed to care about Grab at least a little… They had matchy matchy names.

-

Dean wants to go watch Game of Thrones.

Walder Frey knock off prefers to read the books

-

Uh

how did Sam get here.

I’m gonna assume like… not!Sam for now, since he saved the day so fortuitously.

-

Bart lurkin’ outside.

Not surprising at all that Smash has a deal with him. I doubt he’s letting her off easy, either, she’s going to be sent right back.

-

Does Shrike just walk through this thing and ignore all the darts because they can’t kill him?

-

“Shrek" 

-

Sam sure has some quick and easy insights into the keypad.

-

"Like in Entrapment”

“Did you just say Entrapment?”

… Did Sam just get busted over his pop culture knowledge, by Dean, slower on the uptake than what I thought was weird for Sam?

-

Omg they’re sending Shrike through because the darts can’t kill him. This is ridiculous

-

That *was* ridiculous, but funny

-

Winchester problem solving.

-

Awwwww Smash is back, if it’s really her.

Sam figures out she has a deal.

He also has a real side-eye of Dean. If he’s actually Sam I got to re-evaluate him through this section :P

-

If not, I have another case of something impersonating Sam while doing The Eyebrows

More horrifying: this is Sam actually doing The Eyebrows

-

Oh god it’s full daylight all of a sudden and Sam’s plaid

is orange

under the orange jacket

I hate Sam Winchester

undying feud levels

-

Guess this is the edge of the property where he can’t be killed? Be hilarious if they get him over the line somehow to kill him

-

STUNT DRIVING

-

Suddenly backstory and emotional music plays.

Starting to think nothing’s up with Sam though, like, if he actually was replaced or not, because it was really funny imagining it and not letting them get the drop on me if it happened, and Sam being called out on his references etc, but we’re getting pretty far into it all like leaving the property, having this moment, etc, so maybe it was just a fake out and Sam BAMF’d himself free off-screen or was never even tied up

-

Seems to just be a story of life, though that Shrike’s kid died so soon after he was saved, and it was a “waste” of a demon deal. He seems like he must have already been a certain sort of person to know how to MAKE the deal…

What’s in the trunk…

Ooh I wondered if it would be as soon as Bart wasn’t forthcoming. So a 6x04 parallel as well (or 6x10, which dealt a lot more with them having to work for Crowley).

-

Oooh they were off the property. WHOOPS. It *was* the gates. I thought so but I didn’t figure he’d be so stupid to face them head on.

Although it was over Bart’s bones so it was a risk he had to take to leave?

-

And now we have a new problem :P

-

Awww poor Smash

-

And there’s the rest of the spell. Do they take it?

-

Oookay I was thinking Sam would have to be Sam for this part and he and Dean are making emotional decisions together and Sam’s picking the correct path so… I guess I have to assume 100% this is Sam again? Mittens isn’t talking to me about stuff from this episode like there’s too many spoilers for her to humour me about stuff. Even what I thought were silly things.

-

And now Smash/Alice is in peril after they made the decision that they do not want to get involved in Bart’s shit because he’s a shitty person.

-

Bye bye Bart :3 Nice move, Dean.

So basically, yep, Bart tried so hard to be what Crowley was to Dean in their opening interaction and all his set up to come across as like… something Dean had been missing? That Dean might WANT a demon ally to be on the hook with/have on his hook, even just have on his SPEED DIAL, because to him that probably meant being able to manipulate the Winchesters and so on…

But as I figured from the opening, he just completely underestimates them, including that Dean is way way way waaaay smarter than he gives him credit for, so OF COURSE Dean wins by outsmarting him, by doing what soulless!Sam STOPPED Dean from doing in 6x04 and just torching Crowley on the spot because what did they REALLY owe him and how much loyalty could you really have from a demon as uneasy business partners… So Dean outwits him, and in a move almost exactly like 13x06 he sets up the tools and someone else gets the kill but it’s Dean who outsmarted the monster.

And whooops half of half a spell? Not even half… it’s all gone.

Whoooops. Well at least they saved Alice. And they’re putting her on a bus, as they usually do with characters they won’t see again.

-

There’s like 2 minutes left, which is always an ominous sign.

-

Anyway *waves goodbye to Alice*

-

*Dean pats Sam on the shoulder and we get the last look at Sam smiling*

Aaand to the Bunker, where Dean is getting them some beers while wearing his black Henley.

Like the whole thing resolved with that dude and Bart is dead and all (… they better find someone to replace him although constantly subbing in random “I’m the new king of the crossroads” characters might get a bit ridiculous, we know there’s going to be an opening someone will take… I really hope that was a cue to get us to whoever takes over… If not they just make it even more frustrating that I’ve been waiting 7 years to know if someone replaced Crowley or he was doing both jobs, and now it’s made even more clear there’s a job for a secondary powerful demon in hell to show up in this role and the head crossroads demon is a serious position with power and such… It’s such a frustrating hole in the world building to overlook and I’ve been over-thinking it for longer than I’ve been on tumblr by a good few years.)

-

anyway Sam n Dean are talking

Is Sam going to explain how he escaped from being knocked out and showed up with perfect timing, or was that the plot hole?

-

Nah, they just have a nice talk about the job and how saving people is fun, and all. And Dean being optimistic. Yay! It’s a similar call out to 13x06 and why Dean was so obscenely happy in the cowboy room, but Sam is now seeing that Dean is permanently feeling better even in ridiculous situations, and his mood really has permanently resettled to optimism and cheerfulness again and it is NOT just the cowboys.

-

Okay so I probably need to watch the last part of the episode again but I am now weirdly curious about what happened to Sam - though we know he’s great at escaping things, but Shrike put his life into doubt to Dean, and we had no reason to assume he’d leave Sam in a place where he could easily get out, I’m guessing now that the way he showed up looking like he COULD have just killed and/or maimed Sam with that bloody knife, and I even pointed out that to DEAN’S eyes it would look sooo much worse than if it was as simple as Shrike knocked Sam out, and immediately legged it to the safe to check on it while just hoping unconsciousness would be enough to keep Sam down. (He has an iron skull after being knocked out so many times - like that thing where you kung fu your hands to have tons of micro fractures in order for the bones to heal stronger? That’s Sam’s head.)

He seemed to be put into question after he showed up again and I began to doubt it again as soon as they left the property because it would make no sense to leave Sam behind and just take a fake with them for the emotional resolution of the episode. Especially once they got into it and it was blatantly a straightforward emotional resolution to the episode that Sam had too much of a stake in for it NOT to be him at that point.

BUT Dean questioned Sam’s reference to a thing right after he showed back up, while Sam was coming up with some hilarious ideas for solving things in a way written which you COULD think he was not!Sam and someone with more info/their own stake in this (e.g. the worry Asmodeus was coming) just because it was Sam at his most mercenary to come up with the “just send the guy who can’t die over the traps to spring them all” plan… We KNOW Sam can be like that but at the same time… Sam being like that can also be some other person who would think like that as the LEAST WORST thing they thought that day instead of the actual worst.

Anyway it was all set up in such a way that Dean calling out something he didn’t expect about Sam means he’s questioning the people around him when they behave uncharacteristically - because he KNOWS his loved ones. He understands when they aren’t behaving like themselves. He gets a secret out of Sam that he watched something he’d never normally watch just for Catherine Zeta-Jones, which Dean has to concede, while struggling with how much to mock Sam. It’s interesting they use the empty space of Sam arriving without explanation to cast him into doubt, then have him doubted, verbally putting something out there that Dean stopped to question what Sam was saying. They brush it off, and it ends up being nothing, but considering the looming possibility of Casmodeus - and the fact that Sam started the episode saying he’d talked to Cas so they have literally been decieved THIS episode without knowing it (and Dean didn’t get to verify if it was Cas or not - another reason to phone Sam instead of Dean)…

I wonder if it is leading up to Dean calling out Casmodeus about not being Cas? That this fake out might have been a time it really was Sam, but we and Dean were given a set up to doubt Sam was there in one piece, us with dramatic irony and Dean with just plain not knowing, and so they could play with this concept and it just tapers off - maybe we take the reaction about C Z-J as proof, maybe we eventually decide Sam has to be Sam after all and there’s nothing going on here because he’s involved earnestly in the emotional decisions at the end of the episode.

But it was interesting. Unlike with Ketch and his twin, it was the sort of set up where I wasn’t certain we wouldn’t finish the scene and then cut to Sam tied to a chair and bouncing it over to a nearby sharp object to saw himself free and run and stop the drama, at least until the end of that part of the episode. Once we were back out in the clear light of day it was like Sam’s disgusting plaid was all the proof we needed it was really him :P


	9. 13x09

This was my watching set up today:

[http://bocken.gavle.se/kamera/](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fbocken.gavle.se%2Fkamera%2F&t=ZmUyN2Q0YTM0MWQwNzUxYTZjMGExYWYwMTcwZDNlZWJjYmY0YWM2MCxwa3g4bDF1aA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168322967963%2F13x09-watching-notes-this-was-my-watching-set-up&m=1)

Mittens, like 2 days ago: “so are you going to finish your wayward sisters rewatch by next episode?”   
Me: “hahaahahahaha no… I have all Christmas and into January before the Big Day, right?”  
me, internally: “right?????? Oh god please think this is intentional and I’ve got a timeline for it”  
Mittens: “yeah :)”  
Me: “cool :)”

-

Expectations: Avengers Assemble!!

(Or at least the equivalent of the first half hour of it which puts them all together :P)

I want to love Kaia and in the 0.5 seconds I’ve seen of her smashing Jack in the face I absolutely do and I understand being protective of the nougat child but seriously look at it from her POV so how was that even wank I saw yesterday. But I also want a lot more Kaia so that I can love her for other reasons, because “punched the nougat child” is understandably unsustainable.

Don’t particularly need her to be introduced with the exact same shot Alex AND Claire were introduced with especially as I watched 9x19 second to last and will watch 10x09 but I have a worry since Jack was busting her out of somewhere and it would make Cas to Claire parallels for Jack’s sake to be Cas :P

This is Berens though and he loves him some Wayward Sisters, and there doesn’t seem to be much reason to worry about anything. They’ll give us a midseason cliffhanger but THOSE are cool, and they’ll set it up for the girls to deal with so that’s VERY VERY cool, so my one and only concern and not in a paranoid character stanning way but an “oh no” is worrying Jack will fuck up and take it even MORE badly and go from trying to help to full on unstable descent as he starts to think he can’t be saved from being evil… but no biggie :P Because of the nature of the entire enterprise it’s pretty hard to be concerned about what happens to Sam and Dean just because the story is briefly leaning away from being ABOUT them. And more like happening TO them, that they end up needing to be rescued. So I have like… no worst case scenario for them that would upset me.

So I hope, as a real consideration, as the 2 rando gruff old hunters the girls meet, they don’t come across too poorly because wowza doing the WS watch has made me realise how often when a leading lady is the star of the episode, Sam and Dean are used for casual misogyny to empower their arcs, and OBVIOUSLY that’s how it just IS for women and all but when you’re rooting for these guys in all the OTHER episodes, being reminded that even when they’re normally mostly chill guys as soon as you flip it around and write a woman in their world obviously they’re gonna fuck up and it would be unrealistic for them NOT to considering how ingrained it is in the way men are raised in society and blah blah blah this rewatch is taking me Too Deep but they got to stop telling the woman to stay behind and they can handle it because they might think “because we’re the professionals” but I got to tell them how it looks from another perspective sometimes, and I feel exhausted on Jody’s behalf all of a sudden :P

Anyway based on Jack running around grabbing Kaia and trying to do something heroic for Sam and Dean he’s very much playing the toxic masculinity tropes and they may be more passive and the object of HIS quest in a narrative level, on the back foot with Jack and the chaos he’ll cause on the level of the action.

It’s baby’s first narrative villification :’) They fly the nest so soon.

*downs the rest of my coffee* Let’s do this!

-

Recap: PATIENCE!!!

Also Jack

“You can use him as some sort of inter dimensional can opener and it ends bad” who ever woulda thought

More Patience! She’s way more important.

And Jody’s comment about it being her choice. I saw some criticism of Jody for being part of not respecting Patience here by telling her what to do like they all just offer her conflicting advice and she’s undermining her father or veiled criticism of her for not going along with Dean or whatever, but it was supposed to be the same tone of her offering Alex help - which Berens wrote so he’d KNOW - that if the men deciding for her have decided wrong, and she NEEDS help or to use her powers to save people, Jody will be there, and it was NOT an order or a “if you change your mind, there’s me” it was reaching out in case of the inevitable turmoil and I guess a suspicion it wouldn’t leave Patience alone just because she wanted the powers to. That she had one foot in the life whether she likes it or not and if no one else will be there for her - and in respects to this Patience has been failed by her father AND Missouri - then Jody will help before someone else has to scrape up the pieces.

Anyway more montage of the car driving around, like, hey look these guys do this… reminding us what show we’ve come FROM.

Re-write history a little bit that the dialogue in 13x02 that Sam turned into being about Mary was not, when Dean was talking, about Mary 100%, since he’s weighed like at least 70/30 to Cas over Mary, while Sam was just bringing up Mary first all the time… Interesting how these things get reshuffled for recapping - it’s probably because on the nose Buckleming dialogue and Sam and Dean talking about Jack while he’s in shot with them. It’s actually been SO much about Cas for Dean I wonder if they had to fish around for a neutral scene to turn into Mary angst.

Also moving Jack’s dialogue about feeling bad in 13x04 that he didn’t feel anything, to after 13x06 when he ran away - now you could argue soulless!Sam was motivated to keep doing broadly the right thing with hunting etc because he thought it was what was right even when he didn’t have a soul to guide him, but Jack literally is being powered by an attack of conscience and fear that he’s NOT good which has him all spun out and emotional and so on. So whatever he’s struggling with I still see it as at WORST 50% lack of empathy because of being HALF human and half angel - and angels can care, they just aren’t wired for it to be very sustainable or for them to be good at coping with it. Too much in the establishing Jack stuff has been about how he feels for him NOT to feel anything whether it’s pertinent or not in this exact scenario.

-

OH GOSH I thought that was Kaia making out with a lady in the immediate open of the episode just because this guy has the same length hair and we were still fading in

my hopes are high but I’m not sure they were THAT high :P

-

“Speak of the devil” “Hello!”

Yeah see above narrative villification. There’s SOME dramatic irony that Jack is still adorable and not badly intentioned like Lucifer, or that we wouldn’t expect him to be right now, but it’s still now comparing him in a dark way to Lucifer.

Also kinda low key reassuring that Lucifer is still on a narrative level a bad guy at least for now and especially in relation to Jack and in the contrast to Cas as a positive influence on him. For Jack, though, we’ve gone full circle from Jack saying “father” and us expecting it to be Lucifer but it’s not, to this guy joking the devil is on the other side of the door and instead we get Jack… And unfortunately this has to be the ill-fated Derek mentioned in one of the later promo clips…

-

“You’re… young!”

“I am!”

I have to say, everything he says I read with a :3 smilie after it. His mouth is shaped like that kinda.

-

So the first question of the episode is, where did Jack get money and PLEASE say it’s the ole Doctor Who sonic screwdriver an ATM method.

-

Well the first question would be: wait can he do like SERIOUS research by either flapping around investigating or can he just stone cold read this guy’s ancestry because he’s kinda scary but his powers ARE cosmically timey wimey.

-

Derek is also wearing a white henley. Jack’s earlier innocence being killed in him by use of Jack’s powers? :(

-

Oh noooo Derek don’t go there!!!

It’s kinda terrifying how he just kind of dabbles in the terrifying AU but I suppose if it doesn’t hurt him to get more than glimpses…

JACK GET YOUR HANDS OFF THAT MAN’S TEMPLES AND GO TO YOUR ROOM

-

If nothing else you’re burning his feet

-

Nope you apparently burned out his eyes too. Smooth, kid.

-

He acted oblivious to the fact Derek was dead in the later clip and looked truly upset about it, so unless we see it again from Jack’s POV or another flashback that he truly left him to it and he was burned out after by something else/something that happened to him because of this AFTER Jack left, it seems waaay more likely that if it was his powers he really did kill him on the spot - whether he instantly flapped away once he’d seen what he wanted without checking how Derek was, or bolted when the connection broke without realising that Derek was dead… 

It LOOKS really bad on camera to us now, and it’s going to look worse that Jack has a different version of events to what we saw on screen - yes we don’t see Derek die on camera with Jack there and we cut from Jack doing that to Derek dead on the floor with no Jack, but the way it was cut it makes the intervening space not particularly hard to imagine at this point if you think Jack fucked it up after pushing Derek into it 

In any case whether Jack meant to kill him or not and he DID and it’s the sort of body count one accrues while trying to do a greater good to later feel terrible about in Winchester angst style. But in this case the greater good is to bring back Mary which means we already have one entire dead person to weigh against having her, a single other life, back. Not like one in the face of saving the planet 

Anyways showing Jack’s lack of empathy or consideration - I don’t want to say compassion because I think that is a learned response, but he also hasn’t learned to be CAREFUL with other people, to see them as weaker and more breakable than he is when he steps up to Derek and starts, like, boiling his feet… Like Cas in 9x11 NOT using them up for some supposed better end. Cas describes that mercilessness as something the “old him” would have done and that only on the other side of having been human did he have the learned appreciation for not doing that to Sam, even though he considered him his friend long before that.

Of course, Jack hasn’t even mastered asking people if he CAN use his powers on them 

-

And going from close up of his eyes to the title card… IT DON’T LOOK GOOD.

-

Why is Dean calling Patience aside from to remind us he knows her.

He’s asking for help. I think with hindsight of feeling a wee bit better since Cas is back he knows he was pretty harsh to her at least about NEVER using her powers and just going for the easy life - that he spoke from the really dark place in his heart about it all. I suppose also a sign of their desperation - that he has exhausted all ends which might normally work, and Patience is a wild card resource for them to try.

As if that was breaking and going back on his previous stance, it cosmically unlocks Jody phoning in with a tip off about Jack’s last known whereabouts and the horrifying news, because Dean has backtracked on dictating what Patience should do with her powers, and giving her a choice to come help them if she can… she can still reject it or apologise that she needs to get on with school and stuff if she wants because it’s not truly her place to help, but Dean’s no longer sick to the stomach at the idea of another kid getting dragged into the life, and I don’t think JUST because of desperation but also because his mood has changed. It’s not AS black and white.

-

I love how much they work with Jody :D This is the sort of feeling that since *season 8* I’ve been feeling was missing - just using her even off-screen in episodes she isn’t in as an acknowledgement she’s a part of their lives and resources. I mean yeah it’s all to a point NOW and has noticeably spiked in how often she’s mentioned since WS was on the table for realsies, but… I like it

-

I love Patience’s phone case.

Oh, he called SIX times, okay he’s pretty needy. Perhaps this is a “while Dean’s been driving up to where Jack attacked Derek every time they make a stop he calls again because NOW he’s truly desperate” thing 

-

Honestly though, if she’s psychic why does she need to study? Can’t you just… psychic up the answers on the day? :P

-

She’s honest about Dean calling her, which is good. She’s actually good at communication and not keeping it a secret. And I suppose seeking answers from her father about if this is something she should do - and knowing he’ll say no so she can tell him and he can assure her she doesn’t need to answer the call, and that’s that decided.

But NOW she lies to James about not having any visions, and you can see it in her face that this is why she flunked the test, and that Dean’s calls might be something she’s flip flopping on SPECIFICALLY but they’re representing a call back to the life to her and she’s struggling to resist it or ignore the visions. She can be honest to a point but it’s still eating her up inside and the lie about her visions, about having to pretend to be normal, is where it’s getting to her

*nudges her out the door*

-

“He had quite the freaky imagination” “he hated that word” *sam immediately leaps on “freaky?”* because theeeemes while she meant “imagination”

-

There’s giants in an AU out there somewhere

-

Dean just spotted the AU world he’s been to, riiiight as she says he was a dream walker.

So they know he wasn’t making any of it up.

-

Oooh do you suppose he painted the Thunderbird on the wall of the building? That would be awesome. I wonder if that was just doing art or if he saw it ever…

-

Anyway promo scene number 1. Dean makes the assumption that Jack is looking for Lucifer, right back to the start of the season for him, having to assume the worse and feeling really bad that Jack’s not learned anything - that him going dark, hurting people HAS to be about Lucifer. 

See also: speak of the devil dramatic irony. We KNOW Lucifer isn’t still in the AU. Jack may or may not have sensed him returning but he’s unbothered by it and has his own motivations, to help THEM. It’s the same as when Cas was back but they didn’t know yet and continued to grieve him - Dean’s wrong about this but once again the framing of what they don’t know has happened in other parts of the story is being used really well. 

This is something I feel has been missing from past seasons and used WELL, which is to emphasise and play off what the other parts of the story are doing. Sam and Dean are considerably more oblivious than we are about the story and we’re seeing them scramble by to make do. It’s a good way to have them at a disadvantage where they can be as smart as their little noggins can possibly be and they’re still working on bad intel but it’s OUR advantage to know what it is and know more than them in this way, instead of feeling like they’re being obtuse about stuff, it’s on the epic level of who’s dead or alive or off in an AU or our world that they have no clue about.

-

Sam hacks Derek’s email to find out about Kaia as the next dreamwalker on the list aaaand heeere she is!

Unlike Claire in her intro she has absolutely crappy nail polish that’s all scratched off, and she’s DESTROYING a plastic cup. Just a first shot of her hands and great character stuff :D

Awww no she’s in rehab :( I hate this counsellor guy because he’s just chucking her story at her in front of ALL these people? Like this is not how group chats should work, she’s just being called out here! :( She should be allowed privacy until she’s ready to talk about it, especially if she’s only just ended up here and is probably still detoxing if she’s still so fidgety and ESPECIALLY if she was sent here as a correctional thing.

Like wow no wonder she’s on the defensive.

-

Blaaah I guess Trump did something between seasons to oust poor old fake president Rooney. I have no clue what’s going on there and I don’t want to ask but maybe Jack should look into what happened to his un-talked-about other father on the list :P

This does sort of confirm that there literally is a weird Buckleming AU though that we pass in and out of. They should really get Jack to help them with that too while they’re at it.

I love Kaia’s snark though, 10/10 who cares about plotholes. Give him a piece of your mind!

-

It’s come up before, a few times in the periphery but I’ve *always* been concerned about the psychics who don’t get support they need and end up in the system either locked up for their experiences with BEING psychic or in this case trying to cope with it while not knowing what the heck is going on or how to control it. It seems like Kaia had a mentor in Derek (oh no) and he could have helped but not enough right away to help teach her NOT to go to “the bad place” so she’s been spiralling and self-medicating and if there had been a way out through Derek in her future without interruption… Not any more, she doesn’t even know she’s at her lowest point yet, though it probably already feels like it :(

It puts her in a STARK contrast to Patience with a ~similar~ gift as in they’re both psychic but Patience has a cushy middle class life and currently uses her father as a support system no matter how much they’re on different pages. Kaia is probably about as disadvantaged as you can get in America >.> I can see immediately how she’d pair better with Claire who might have started lower middle class or whatever strata that was where you own a nice house and have all that bland Novak lifestyle she grew up with, but lost it all and spent her formative years in the foster system as someone with nothing, albeit at least being white >.> And Alex was raised in a sketchy vampire basement but fell into being a Sheriff’s daughter, became preppy with social aspirations and is now on track to being a nurse, all of which has made her since 11x12 the social aspirant like Sam was with his law school in parallel to Claire continuing to Dean extremely loudly.

-

Jack’s evil smile from 13x01 is back. That thing where they cast someone who could look literally 1 days old adorable sniff the baby’s head cute in one moment and super scary spawn of satan in the next - he hasn’t been framed like this since the last cut to ad break on someone stumbling across him in the wilderness with no clue how dangerous he might be of Sheriff Barker driving up to the naked guy harassing the people at the Salty Butt Place. Now we know unlike the hypothetical which was subverted to him being the nougat child in 13x01, that he poses a very very real threat to Kaia.

-

Jack is the Worst At Lying, still - he just radiates that peace and purpose which is the most terrifying mood for people to have in this show because if they think they know what they’re doing and they’re doing it for good, then they’re really really not. He is getting exponentially better at research and understanding context cues, regardless - he didn’t know “what’s your poison” but when Kaia asked him why he was here, he tried to pretend he was also admitted to the facility and he has some awareness of a class A drug and even if he’s not even really trying to act anything, he knows this is something to say to fit in in a scenario where he doesn’t fit. Like Cas, his mannerisms really betray him.

So he goes right back to the truth, telling Kaia he knows her name and he’s here for her when she brushes him off as being uninterested in helping him - as of course she doesn’t feel that she belongs. So he tells her the truth, to the degree that he probably stole all this from Derek’s head while discovering there was another, more powerful dreamwalker and that this is what DEREK thought of her (ow ow ow).

Oh gosh I love this shot of the Impala pulling up from outside through the barred windows - in this case we’re looking at them from the inside out - they’re not imprisoned, they’re in the sun and a light rain and free agents, and the next shot they pull up and the chicken wire is off to the side in the other third of the frame showing them OUTSIDE it. It’s more dramatic irony - Kaia dithers, then chooses to go after Jack - the car pulls up behind the window but she has no idea what that means like we do, no idea that these are the people who would save her and warn her about what Jack did.

-

ALSO THE TIMING ON PULLING OFF A CHARACTER INSIDE RUNNING OFF AND THEN CHANGING FOCUS TO CHARACTERS IN A CAR PULLING UP OUTSIDE

-

Sam listing how Kaia’s entire family is dead. Nice. >.>

They assume her OD was about the death of her entire family (ouch!?!?) and “no wonder” she ended up here, not that it’s to do with her powers

-

Jack does indeed do the thing where he knocks out someone to help Kaia get free.

And tells her they’re just sleeping, just like Cas did with Claire

I would assume the parallels end there - Cas was genuinely motivated to help Claire yes to make himself feel better about not honouring his promise but also that promise was there and see also 9x11, learning compassion from the other side, beginning to understand his place in the world better, and finally making right what was a wrong he caused 6 years previously. Whereas Jack is doing this entirely self motivated without even a consideration of what Kaia would get from it - her freedom only benefits him and her powers only benefit his.

-

He’s also getting way more dark in his attitude - “You’re not the only one with powers” and about the door being triple locked, “was it?” - he’s growing in confidence about what he can do and how other people and things relate to him.

Aka he’s starting to get a sense of where he is in the food chain >.>

These lines in particular make me even more wary of how he’s changed, when Sam and Dean catch up to him in a few seconds for the next promo scene.

-

Meanwhile Kaia takes him down a few pegs because he’s visibly spiralling just because he’s being rejected and he doesn’t know how to handle that - very very raise an eyebrow symbolic about how Kaia appreciating the jail break but no thanks to being used is treated by Jack, now placed as our Grabby Young Man Who Doesn’t Know What No Means.

“She hit me!”  
“Yeah, good." 

I love casual feminist Dean Winchester. It’s not that he thinks Jack should be hit because he’s evil, but because you have to learn to be nice to women when you’re a grabby dude who overpowers them. Treatment of women is basically made synonymous to not being a dick about his powers, as he’s been shown being over-confident. He’s the over-privileged white boy. (perhaps a good reason NOT to have cast him as non-white if this is a longer theme)

I’ve been saying all season not to get too precious about Jack eventually being treated differently by the narrative but I can still predict a mile off people being upset after they got invested in him to the point of this now being idk ooc or that the writers are being mean to him >.>

-

I already wrote in my tags about this promo scene how excited I was about the need/want stuff going on here - that Need is once more being framed as really really bad, that Want is being made clear to be different from need but when Jack is doing this for them, because he thinks it’s what they wants, he is missing the nuance that want isn’t the same as that you SHOULD do it or that it’s the morally right thing to do.

Dean has been warned by Billie not to go poking at the AU after all, and that means any wants about Mary in it are now firmly placed on the other side of that cosmic line, that he can WANT her back but he can’t HAVE her back.

-

To his credit Jack really does look pretty horrified that Derek is dead as I remembered and thought that can’t be the whole story from the open.

But he swaps pretty quickly to talking about what he’s been doing, after sparing only a moment for him - already compared to the guard, he can shrug it off, especially as he feels his actions are justifiable to a greater purpose and he didn’t mean to kill him. Being able to set aside collateral damage is *especially* a Sam trait, as Sam works in Greater Good utilitarian morality, which is not a bad thing in some ways - it’s a good leader trait. But this mission of Jack’s has been cosmically warned AGAINST.

-

Jack carries on talking past the promo scene about how he’s been nosing around to other worlds, which is pretty much making Billie shudder in her office >.>

-

"I researched, like you taught me.” Why does that sound like it should inspire a note of regret about teaching him 

-

Oh we ARE getting flashbacks to Jack’s perspective on meeting Derek. Good, I was hoping we would, at least if not that he didn’t kill him, to see Jack’s rationale or that he truly had no idea…

“I could see what he saw” OH BOY IS THAAAT A BAD PHRASE

Maybe just because I was writing about the end of 9x19 like 2 days ago but Momma uses basically a light version of this re: transforming Alex, to what Crowley’s big old speech in 9x23 to Dean was, where obviously there was that line. There was another “see what I see” somewhere in either season 8 or early season 9 that made me absolutely flip a table when I heard it, but I can’t recall what episode right now, and busy watching too much to go look :P

-

Maryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

-

Okay so we see a glimpse, just a lil one, of Jack reassuring Derek - at this point I have to go with angels cleaning up after Jack but that may have been a big fake out but it’s reminding us to be critical of his behaviour and that goes with his treatment of Kaia which very very much was something to be critiqued >.>

-

Mary’s alive! We don’t get much time for Sam and Dean to react to that but it’s Dean who makes the louder surprise noise, because he had to let go of Mary - unfortunately telling him she’s alive is like the one thing that would make him most likely to break the universe if it means saving her from something awful. Which is probably why Billie sent him back without telling him, because telling himself Mary was dead was actually healthy in the circumstances he didn’t know better about

-

Boop

-

(I love this effect)

-

We’re getting a lot of repetition, of what Jack sees this scene.

But this time with the “help me!!!” for Sam and Dean to respond to.

And Dean immediately says, “Mom!” because now she’s ASKED for help.

(And just last episode we saw Dean strung up in hell yelling for help)

of course Cas saved him that time and it was a no personal consequences, just cosmic consequences resurrection - aka no personal cost on Sam or Dean for it, but it WAS how to get the apocalypse rolling. Awfully convenient that the second seal doesn’t get broken until Dean’s back alive, even though he broke in hell a month ago by their reckoning :P

-

And while Jack continues to explain to Sam what happened with Derek - how he stopped because Derek wasn’t strong enough (he shouldn’t have been forcing him in the first place because he still hurt him even if he may not have been the one to kill him?) we get them blurred out, their voices blurred, as we get Dean and his sad music, as he realises how he spent MONTHS trying to get over Mary and tell himself she was dead but that he was wrong and she needed help and it all hits him at once :(

Oh no Dean.

You’ve got to be stronger than this. D:

-

“Kaia, she’s the key”

Cut to Kaia sticking out her hand, again - more close ups on her hands, and she’s hitching a lift.

I’m no expert,  but this is an angel, isn’t it

-

DUDE you didn’t have to knock her out - she WANTED a lift.

-

Although maybe that close up on the knife was to say Kaia spots it, hesitates and gets knocked out because she’s not being quick enough to get in the car and might rightfully wonder what that knife is about.

-

They really cast Patience to be someone whose eyeballs we wouldn’t mind seeing up close all the time.

What on earth is she seeing. That’s not the main AU because it has trees and a scary animal skull, but it’s Sam and Dean and Jody all together in the same place getting stabbed. Even with her vision filter, that blue-ness is like the blue other world we seem to see Claire and Kaia in together, at least, in the promo stuff for 13x10.

-

Other worlds all seem to suck and be some variation of Purgatory. Let’s have a fairy world already.

-

Lo and behold it was an angel kill and they’re hunting Jack, and he’s unfortunately showed his hand by being interested in dreamwalkers, so now the angels are if lures him in >.>

-

Nooooo Kaia has to find out Derek died this way.

She doesn’t even know what a Winchester is!!! D:

-

“You were right, this whole time, we should have been looking for her.”

“I was just hoping. I didn’t know.”

Of course their stances are flipping - now with concrete proof Sam has to re-emphasise he was never doing this search because he knew all along that it was true, but Dean deals with objective truths so much - she’s dead, she’s not dead, and that his actions HAVE to have been one or the other. He’s giving HIMSELF the “you should have looked for me in Purgatory” treatment, despite being on the same side as Sam in 7x23 while he thought Mary was dead and gone and there’s no hope because what do THEY know about inter dimensional travel.

Sam’s got what we could call a meta writer hunch - he had an idea based on that he could read Mary not being murdered in front of him and the idea she lived beyond the portal was the subtext. Sam doesn’t want vindication he was right, he was just interpreting what he saw in a way that made the story he hoped for. Just because it pans out doesn’t mean that he is any more knowledgeable or had a reason to INSIST things were one way or the other. Dean made his own interpretation from the same knowledge and came to a different reading, the more negative, miserable one, the one that didn’t allow the story to continue after he could see it, but that it ended as soon as it was off-screen from his eyes.

Listening to Sam would have done NOTHING more for them in the time between 12x23 and now.

And in this season where dramatic irony about what happens where they can’t see it is running the story… yeah, wrong direction.

-

“We find her, no matter what it takes”  
“Yup.”

Oh dear, dear Winchesters.

-

I’d say “never change” but literally the entire point of everything since 8x01 has been “maybe pls change just a lil like not asking a lot maybe just don’t… unleash untold havoc for the sake of saving family?”

-

Dean checks in with Jack. “You okay?”

Jack’s pretty upset about them just assuming he turned evil and killed Derek.

But while he didn’t do that, the narrative HAS turned to questioning how he is behaving, at least to course correct. Does he know Dean said “good” about Kaia hitting him because he thought Jack was evil and should be punished, or because he needs to learn not to grab?

-

In any case, it forces some honest communication about what they thought, so perhaps they’ll be able to work from this later about nuances >.>

-

Dean confirms that they’re Jack’s family, which is nice. They probably need to hear Jack confirming that Lucifer ISN’T anything to him, but like with 13x01 reminding us that Lucifer’s called out to Jack before, the recap of this episode reminded us Lucifer’s called out to Jack before. Whether he is or isn’t, whether Jack remembers him doing it or not (actually, 13x07 had Asmodeus doing it too, reminding us Lucifer had done it outside of recaps), the fear is there in what WE know as well, so the story is using what we know possibly AGAINST us to feed worries about what Jack may or may not do.

(BTW idk how obvious it is but I love treating these watches with the full treatment of what casual eyes might see as well as what I do - like rolling with misdirections - especially since I watch with casual viewers, my mum and my friend Cat, and I need to, well, see what they see. And to understand why they’re seeing it. Because I think fandom arguments go down some utterly ridiculous pits of self-wankery, and I like to keep my impression of what the show is doing right up with what it’s been recently TELLING us it’s doing which the casual eye spots better than the meta eye (and my mum and Cat have 2 different surface text interpretations on Jack). 

Whether this element ever comes into play I don’t particularly care, like, I’m not making some huge spec that Lucifer’s gonna manipulate Jack this way or something, but the reminders this happens, that the casual viewer may still be expecting Jack to be evil, that Sam and Dean CAN worry even at this stage that as soon as Jack disappears he’s returning to Lucifer, seeing that alignment as NARRATIVELY compelling, even if Jack says it’s not EMOTIONALLY compelling… If NOTHING else happens with this it’s part of the emotional tone they’re setting here… I’m preemptively defensive of the people defending Jack like this is all not a part of his story because he’s inherently sweet)

And he considers Sam and Dean and Cas his family now, changing up from 13x01 where he was just asking for his father, and DEAN is the one who says, yes, we consider each other family. Weird as you are, so help me, I appear to have adopted you dammit.

I don’t know if Jack can understand yet that Sam and Dean reacting like this might be also hurt on their side that Jack leaves, that if he starts hurting people, if he goes back to Lucifer, that’s a loss and a defeat not just because they wanted to use Jack or to mould him to be good just to protect people from him, but a personal loss for them, that they couldn’t save Jack, that he rejected their family.

-

And Dean validates Jack that looking for Mary was a “good thing” even though it’s been dubious and presumptuously good and well-motivated (e.g. personal good decided by what benefits the Winchesters and their wants not the world) at BEST and at worst is gonna knock down Billie’s cosmic house of cards.

-

I’m so proud of Patience immediately packing up and leaving when people are in danger. I mean her goodness was never ever in question but yeah :P

I like how her visions are like Sam’s - their timing comes with enough room for her to do something about it :P

-

Oooooooooooooh shit James still has all his issues, he literally reverse-John Winchesters Patience “you choose that life, you don’t come back”. Same phrasing he used on Sam when Sam wanted to go to college, when Patience is like bye bye gonna go save people for a day or two, back soon.

He wants to emotionally blackmail her to stay and be safe but he CAN’T see what she sees - which is that people are going to die and those images are going to haunt her. Better to risk exile and keep people alive than to stay and feel like she was a coward.

…

On the other hand if Kaia or Claire doesn’t snark at her that Patience is upset Daddy cut off her credit card at some point or another what even is the point :P

-

We’re never gonna get to see that night with Sam and John now. But here’s a reverse stand in to get us started on Wayward Sisters!

-

“You picked the wrong bait, I’m not the sort of girl people come for.”

I need Claire to rescue her like eighty times in a row in defiance of that pls. Not that I want Kaia to be a victim, I just want her to feel like she matters to someone <3

“I’m not white, rich, blond… No one’s going to fight for me. I don’t matter.”

:<

*protectively adopts her in the meantime over Christmas if she doesn’t get to meet Claire yet*

-

I love how Jack is just like Fuck You to the angels because they keep killing people and kidnapping people - not a great incentive for him to help them but they’re doing how they always do or are no better than demons any more.

-

They also claim Jack should be “among his own kind” - he can pick which side he favours, but his half-angel side is certainly causing him more trouble than his half-human side >.> And he’s been given NO incentive to identify as angel, although he accepts Cas as his real father it’s an emotional bond, and while it neatly balances to give him an angel father and a human mother, Cas himself is an exile from Heaven for caring too much, and they wanted to use HIM as bait for Jack, until they lost him, and got this better lead on what Jack was looking for instead of Cas.

-

Also Heaven isn’t exactly doing much to save Cas now are they? :P

-

n.b. unlike the Winchesters I suspect they know what’s happened to Cas.

-

Anyway the belonging theme for Jack.

But he can pick easier “I am home.”

YEAH. Now Cas needs to do it, because Jack is his anchor if nothing else.

-

Kaia like “WHAT THE FUCK”

-

WOAH Dean came close to Billie sighing and filing that notebook.

-

“Are you okay?”  
“NO WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”

-

Kaia having some issues with bad angels but you’re the son of satan??? What???

“the whole world’s insane, you get used to it.”

Her FACE is amazing.

D:

-

Contractually obliged as a shitposter to point out Sam talking about opening a door while waving his hand like that

I hate everything

Why the 6x15 parallels huh? :P

-

But yeah now Sam and Dean are on the save Mary train they want to use Kaia too.

-

Kaia like… “No.” USE THAT NO. You don’t have to break the world if you don’t want to!!!

She points out rightfully that the angels only wanted her because if Jack did - if he backs off she’s in no trouble and she can forget this ever happened. This whole thing is forcing her into it and if dudes being shitty about her boundaries kick off the whole mess for Wayward Sisters… lol

“We NEED you to dreamwalk for us” nope.

DEREK is the one who saw the AU. She ONLY goes to the Bad Place. If it’s the blue AU, the one full of blood and death and *monsters* is she being literal, that WAS a monster skull, and the entire thing is that she’s tapping a DIFFERENT AU, one full of much worse things, Purgatory-esque, and the reason for all this dark blue on everyone… That Kaia is linked to something different?

And they’re just reading “the bad place” as she calls it as “well clearly that’s our AU” without considering the horrors of what else might be out there in the cosmic multiverse?

-

OH NO She’s been clawed up by the monsters there!

GUYS PAY ATTENTION TO CONTEXT SHE IS BEING MAULED BY MONSTERS IN HER DREAMS. RANDO AU DEMONS WOULDN’T DO THAT TO HER. DID YOU NOT SEE THE SKULL - oh wait, Patience did.

Patience, come save your new future sister, kay? :P

-

Woops, I thought Dean might crack with the blurry out bit earlier where it was all hitting him how he hadn’t been saving Mary the entire time and he put the “you didn’t look for me in Purgatory” weight on HIMSELF.

-

This definitely makes Dean being a bit of a dick to Donna in 10x08 look light in comparison :P I was saying up the top that the dudes look bad in these episodes because it’s about the girls and their shit! And now Dean’s abruptly been shattered by Jack’s revelation about Mary.

-

Well Sam looks worried but he’s not freaking arguing about this while Dean ABDUCTS A GIRL.

-

FYI Mary might be yelling for help but she also does not approve.

And this is the example Dean is setting for Jack - he tells him off for grabbing Kaia earlier but then when it comes to her most important ability to say no this episode, Dean snaps and insists she does it anyway. That this is “good”.

-

I think Jack’s visions are dangerous. Whether he manipulated Cas or not it’s clear that with this parallel, what Cas saw was NOT GOOD for him, that when Jack shows you something it’s stretching what you’re SUPPOSED to know. He’s dangerous on a cosmic scale not just because of his powers but the compulsion of what they can and can’t do for you. Dean is the centre of the universe in other ways, the cosmic firewall, the balance. Billie was managing him as best she could, keeping him alive and on the job, and NOT telling him about Mary. Not giving him the motivation to do this. Jack casually shows them stuff they Can’t Know, and it has literally driven Dean over the brink into threatening a girl with a gun and abducting her to use her powers, because this is cosmically UNBALANCED. It’s WRONG. And now Dean is wrong, he’s broken and hurt and Jack didn’t MEAN to do this to him, but his vision still caused it.

-

I am surviving this by staring at a stinking adorable piggie I made last night, every time I get too stressed. Do you want to see?

-

Sam is trying to SUBTLY course-correct Dean but I think we’re a bit far for that - it’s literally counter knocking him out and talking him down when he’s not right in front of the temptation.

-

Oh yes I know Berens co-wrote 12x19 so I’m giving this all the credit it’s due that Jack’s visions are not to be fucked with, and they can derail you utterly by playing on the thing you need most. 

This is *literally* the stance I’ve been taking the entire time with what he did to Cas and I don’t know if the debate got derailed in one direction by the fight for Cas’s agency and in another by Jack having to be inherently good, but I’m literally seeing this as Jack is inherently a nougat child and that’s been long established. But he did the thing again to Sam and Dean, and Dean had a light demonstration of how he would tell Jack to respect Kaia and all, but as soon as Jack boops him he’s got a new dangerous element in his head of the Terrible Knowledge Jack has which should NEVER have been shared. 

It’s BROKEN Dean. It played off his most vulnerable aspects - his need to save, MARY, the loss and pain and walling Mary up in his mind as lost at sea, and now here she is stranded on a desert island and Kaia’s the one ship that can navigate to it? His actions are irrational, and dangerous, and he’s not in his right mind because his right mind was overridden by Jack’s vision. EVEN IF THESE ARE HIS CHOICES they are not choices he was supposed to be making to the point of Billie, the highest power who’s even remotely helpful in this world now God isn’t answering, SPECIFICALLY having the most intense conversation of the show since the first time he had a sit down chat with Death, to warn him NOT TO DO THIS. But it’s such terrible, irresistible knowledge it changes his entire personality.

“That sounds like us” he said in 13x05

Cas making off with Jack to protect him and stop talking to Dean sounds like Cas. >.> Remember in 8x22 when Dean was pissed that Cas disappeared from the Bunker and he’d just gone to buy toilet paper and pie, and got derailed onto Metatron preying on his misery about breaking Heaven and his need to redeem? Metatron took a lunch date and an ease-him-in mission to manipulate him into it. Anyway Jack doesn’t need to do that because he can just show the one thing that will utterly, utterly break you down and lo and behold Dean’s now doing this without question, UNABLE to question. Literally, like, 10x22 shoot the kid levels of dangerous.

Dean is now the strongest answer that Cas was utterly changed by his encounter with Jack in 12x19 and I don’t CARE about if it was for a greater good or not or that in some ways Cas actually seemed happy and at peace in 12x23 or 13x06 talking to Jack, because the discussion wasn’t about if it was good or not, if Cas and Jack can’t be good despite that, if they earn it, just if it happened on way or the other. At least for what I was interested in. Because I like Jack and I think he’s good and always thought they’d play it either good or down the middle because it’s just more interesting.

It’s just… He’s too powerful. He’s dangerously powerful. Maybe we will or won’t see what he showed Cas, but when he shows Dean something in a mirror moment, Dean is fundamentally harmed to the core to the point of plunging into the depths of the worst we’ve ever seen him. It’s the sort of knowledge that could drive someone insane, if this was a slower story - a Gothic novel where Dean learns this truth and can’t do anything to save his mother for 200 pages but now he KNOWS.

Better not to know - Billie sent him back before she could betray anything about it to him. But as I said back in 13x05 that was the accidental hope, the chink in his certainty that I think he wishes he had known sooner, when Jack was still in their control, that they could have acted even just a few weeks sooner. That he should have listened to Sam and been encouraging that horrifying tutoring of Jack to use his powers that was shown for Sam to be a bad path to connecting with Jack, and in 13x03 (hi Berens) Sam recognised was forcing Jack too hard to do what he wanted. To the point of giving Jack a meltdown about if his powers made him good or evil under that pressure.

… And if they break the world, Jack’s not going to think much better of himself or the goodness of the Winchesters :S

-

Jack apologising again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it always sounds so weird coming out of his mouth. It always sounds like he knows he’s supposed to say it, but he’s curious about what it means, that he doens’t quite understand it. It was a full on “I’m sorry?” the first time in 13x01, but even now it lifts at the end of the phrase, not sinking into apology.

-

He’s mansplaining to Kaia how she can help.

-

DON’T SHOW KAIA THINGS. STOP SHOWING PEOPLE THINGS.

-

Five seconds… Uhoh.

-

He really likes doing that to people.

“Our powers can be good. We can do good things in this world.”

STOP MAGICALLY MANSPLAINING AS WELL

-

Sorry, sorry.

Look they’re all on this bizarre righteous crusade and she should choose, sure, and she’s choosing to feel ABDUCTED. BECAUSE SHE WAS ABDUCTED AT GUN POINT

Jack might make her feel a wee bit better about her powers being part of a wider picture - of what she might see if she starts to control them. And again, abducted at gun point, she agrees to let Jack show her but this is an awful, forced situation for her, and it might be a first step on her journey where they finally start to relate about powers and he can ease how bad it feels for her, but this whole thing is happening to save MARY and… argh. It’s a mess. She might be mildly more cooperative because he did that but at the same time it reeks of him trying to make her see things his way because he’s on this mission to get Mary back and do some real good, and doing this, showing her things, makes her compliant. Empathy or not. Purposefully manipulating or just trying to help. It happens.

-

Wheeeee car chase

Wheeee stunts

-

Oh yay creepy boats this never goes well.

-

They’ve literally abducted Kaia to their own shady hideout congratulations you’re being the villains again :P

Dean faces off against a bunch of angels and it looks really awesome. Run run run big crane shot throw all the money at this! 

wheeeeee action.

The number of angels out there seems worrying, like they’re either gonna have to help deal with a problem bigger than this squabble, or they’re all going to get obliterated, because once the Winchesters are outnumbered, there’s Problems that can only get resolved with Bigger Problems.

-

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”  
“We’re screwed!”

-

ANGELS DOING COOL THINGS

-

That was awesome

-

“We go out guns blazing”

Dean NO.

I hope this is about subverting the ending he thinks he deserves - 12x22 was Berens of course with the discussion of how he thought they’d always die and keeping on bringing it up… Yeah.

-

He apologises for dragging her into the fight - again, not mind controlled, just mind-altered, but in this sort of drama he can still see what’s going on, still feel bad for how he got her into being attacked by tons of angels, still come back to himself to see that much, even if he’s now unable to let go that Mary is alive and calling for help.

-

And then Kaia and Jack decide they might as well just go to an AU to escape, aka worse problems than all the angels but at least it’s novel :P

“Can you take us to our mom?” “Can you do it?”

Sam is in on it too. The forbidden knowledge temptation >.> The spell that unleashed Amara involving the forbidden fruit. I mean. Argh.

-

These angels are so cool. We never see them doing this badass stuff

-

“Are you ready?”  
“no. Let’s go.”

Love her

-

“Okay, I’m there, I’m in the bad place.”

Oh no.

There’s a monster.

WOAH COSMIC

-

He found it! That was such a cool visual of The Comos and I wish I had time to deal with it!!!! 

-

Kaia looping between the Bad Place and Mary AAAAAAH

-

She’s just a scared girl being tormented by monsters from another realm all her life!!!! STOP MAKING HER DOOO THIIIISSSSS

-

Ooopppppssssss

I guess you’re all in the Bad Place now. Or the angels were vaporised. But Sam n Dean seemed to be too so I’m gonna go with a whole bunch of angels AND Sam n Dean were sent there.

New rift in the creeepy boat. Wondered if this would be a set piece for WS because it’s SO big. Having Bad Place Monsters wander into the world from it

-

*pats my lil felt pig sadly*

-

Jodyyyy. Calling Sam to check in with him, and knock knock here’s Patience like MOM HELP

-

ALL THE MELTED ANGEL BLADES. AAAAAAAAH

-

Woops no there’s a bunch of burned wing prints. So the angels are super dead. Are Sam and Dean super vaporised? I guess not.

-

JACK FOUND MARY

Well at least someone accomplished some damn goals around here. THAT is a great shot of them seeing each other for the first time and she’s like… strange boy???

and he’s like MOM I AM HERE TO HELP.

Wait.

Grandma.

What the fuck.

What the fuck is wrong with this family tree. Mary is 29, 60, and whatever age Sam Smith is discreetly in between the two, Jack is 3 months old, and fucking 27. There’s a 2 year age gap between Jack and Mary and she’s his freaking Grandma what the fuck.

I’m just saying, life experience aside, Mary and Jack are both the most fucked up “millenials” in the cosmos.

-

Sam n Dean get to deal with their own nonsense over here in the Bad Place.

-

Sam never got to enjoy the whole stranded in Purgatory feel before! FUN FUN FUN.

-

I honestly think after that interview about Kaia that the writers cared more about fleshing out The Bad Place than they do about the Michael AU, that one was introduced to make a point, and to act as a place to stuff Mary and Lucifer for a while. This one is being introduced to cause trouble for Wayward Sisters for at least the first season if they get it, and is Kaia’s entire unspoken trauma.

-

Dean’s like “C'mon” because he knows what to do when you get stranded somewhere.

-

HEEEEE it’s a giant chicken universe. I LOVE IT.

-

CLUCK CLUCK MOTHERFUCKERS


	10. 13x10

… I was too excited to do notes, that’s all on me :P We’re doing this late, fuelled with 3 days of fandom yelling, and a large pot of rooibos tea.

-

I think starting the recap with Jody’s line from 9x19 that started this whole thing emotionally is BRILLIANT -

Whatever you want from me, I’ll give it. If you want, I’m here.

Because this was the perfectly tuned line to say to Alex to respect her boundaries, respect her journey and where she might go and the choices she had to make about her future and what Jody would do for her… But now it encapsulates the entire heart of this show, because this is Jody laying herself on the line for her girls, for all of them, as the emotional core of the show, the one whose house for “wayward girls” is opening up for business. That she’s given the same promise to Patience, and taken in Claire and would probably do the same for Kaia in a flash, even was the one to offer to teach Donna more about hunting at the end of 10x08, though she’s adult support.

I think it’s 100% the right choice, because Jody is undoubtedly the core of this, and I don’t think her adopting Alex was the first time anyone thought she could have a spin off - a hunter sheriff is an ideal idea for refocussing and, honestly, Weekend at Bobby’s started to sell the idea in that you could flip around the POV and whether he was in it or not, Jody’s perspective on it all was even more fascinating than his. But obviously by 9x19, right in the shadow of the failed spin off attempt, the obvious choice was right there under their noses, and this line sealed the deal, because it gave Jody the chance to prove she was capable of carrying that weight. And boy does she.

-

“Wayward girls” said over the clip of Alex and Claire being dragged into their respective jail/child prison cells by the authorities, to show their roots before Jody got to ‘em

Patience being offered her route in as the decision she has to make about leaving her life to *become* wayward and go off her seemingly easy path through life.

-

“Losing everyone you’ve ever known” - Claire losing Amelia (holding her like Jody will hold her at the end of the episode), Jody killing Momma - two very very different scenarios, but in both, how they lost their mother/mother figure, one a tragedy, one saving her from the toxic upbringing.

“Am I brave enough/ Am I strong enough?” the music sings over Claire in the taxi in 10x20 going into her future, when we see her last before she settles with iron certainty on becoming a hunter, and then Alex right after she has made her choice, and stabbed Momma with the dead man’s blood so that she can be free

“To push away my fear/ To stand where I’m afraid” Patience choosing to leave when her father tells her she won’t come back, and Donna seeing her first vampire, and being pulled into the world of the supernatural

“I am through with this” Jody, I think, right after she kills Momma, having struck the decisive blow which changes her life to bring her and Alex together and start this all

Then loud music/chorus and I lose music comprehension and we’re recapping and they’re all being badass :P

They’ve done a lot of beheading.

Claire fighting the werewolf in 12x16 edited to not show her getting beaten >.>

To be fair, that’s the learning experience where she doesn’t make the mistake again this very episode :D

(And she has a lot of mistakes still to make to be formed into a great hunter… She’s still 5 years younger than Dean in 1x01!)

-

The best bit is how the badass music was for the girls, and it drops away when Jack is on screen and becomes very muted because this is The Man Pain™ and therefore not right to play this song for :P All the other dialogue had it at least pumping away in the background.

-

And, yep, her first appearance in the recap, she’s part of the main plot, not the established sisters (I wondered about this on the first watch but bleh :P) you hear “I’ve been sacrificed” for Kaia: <https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/169929858758/and-all-three-of-kaias-screams-got-punctuated>

She’s a huuuuge part of the show but I guess that’s in a main plot way - the mythology will be built around her and Claire’s emotional story is built around that. In a way it elevates her, but it also, for now, excludes her from the core family group, as she’s not there in the end for the family meal around the table, and she’s not here in the opening credits being layered in with them. I suspect if the show is picked up, we’ll have Kaia back by the end of the first season, and she’ll be officially welcomed to the family group, but in the meantime as she’s *so* new she hasn’t got the same connection to the story and history of Jody’s family, even that Patience is rooted deep in SPN’s story despite being new, and met Jody early on in the season… Staggering their arrivals means that Kaia being able to join the family would be a huge goal to achieve, to round out their numbers and have their first big victory.

-

This song is the only way to make that last action of 13x09 any more amped up than it already was.

-

And the song ends and we recap Patience on Jody’s doorstep and her vision as the lead in to the episode, which, oh no. :(

-

I love this opening sequence a ridiculous amount. Quirky one-off werewolves, tiny lil blonde girl representing who Claire used to be right down to the braid in her hair (and she lost her shoe!) and the whole slow approach of the delivery van Claire stole while implementing this extremely extra plan… There’s good tension in this whole thing, and the werewolf’s knock knock joke made me laugh out loud because I’m awful… Also “don’t play with your damn food” … god.

Claire’s knock knock joke is, of course, much better.

I love the way she pulls up and brings light to this place, and sets the monsters on edge before she ever knocks on the door. And the yellow eyes callback! It looks so much like one of the early shots of yellow eyes, maybe the revealing one… If this is the proper opening of the pilot, to compare it to 1x01, we have Claire saving a girl from the yellow-eyed monster… Down on their magnitude of monsters they deal with though. There’s no destiny and epic plan that can possibly compete with what the Winchesters get up to, and really, no one wants or needs there to be.

-

We’ve seen a lot of tilted picture frames this season and I don’t know if it’s because before this season started I photoshopped one straight for silly reasons or if it’s because it’s an actual theme. It’s still symbolic, of the picture being shifted, which might mean you’re viewing it wrong, or that the picture itself has changed and moved - which this show is doing both in the main show and this itself being a new and different perspective on the show.

-

I love how Mr Werewolf completely unironically says “who’s there” after all that stuff scaring the kid without even thinking about how this can bounce back in his face and he’s going to get the fright.

-

I love Claire’s innocent little “Huh?” when he says that, and the gentle music like maybe this was all a misunderstanding.

“Your name’s right on the box.” He’s reduced down to just being a monster, and she’s the thing that kills monsters. :D

-

I also love that she blows him away before he can say “Bitch”

-

And that Claire uses Amanda’s full name to greet her and put her at ease, but also that she’s taken away Mr Werewolf’s name, and given Amanda hers.

-

She’s so gentle with the little girl :D

-

And she has so many weapons shoved in her boots!

I like how this show she can now use her fighting skills to overpower a werewolf despite being smaller, and also that she knows not to let them get the drop on her, and reads Amanda’s face well when honestly it’s a trope not to realise why the person you think you’re freeing looks like that and get surprised again.

I also like it was a lady werewolf who attacks at the end - it’s not JUST a girlpower, men are dumb brutes message, just that these girls are very strong in their own ways and that is a good thing to celebrate. You can still get lil girls who get kidnapped, innocent civilian moms, and werewolf ladies. Before you even hit the range of girls and women in the main characters.

-

The sad moment where she reunites a family and wishes for a moment it would be that simple for her… And at the end she is given a whole large family to emotionally reunite with - or join for the first time :D

-

And then the rehash of the “hunting trip and haven’t been home for a few days” line, and title card. I think a lot has already been written about what’s different, like that it’s Jody calling Claire home, and taking her off the road. And she’s the parental figure - which may just reflect back on what Dean was to Sam I guess :P Except that she’s also just friends with Sam n Dean, and this is also a front to get Claire home, because she’s more concerned about Patience’s vision and Claire dying than she is about Sam and Dean, concerning as that is. She doesn’t know any of the ways in which they could even remotely currently be fucked, as she last checked in with them at the start of 13x09 and they last checked in with her after getting the lead on Kaia. Obviously Dean had some motives that he didn’t want to be alone and didn’t REALLY need Sam, he just wanted to have him around, but, yeah, this is entirely for Claire’s sake. There isn’t so much mytharc as there is intensely personal, heart-based reasons for things :’)

-

How many episodes start with showing Jody’s truck… I love the shot of Claire in the mirror as she pulls into the driveway, just kind of… staring at Jody’s truck and wondering if she’s doing the right thing coming home, like she’s already facing down Jody after leaving. Like it only becomes real in that moment at the end of the drive.

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It kills me that Alex and Jody are around a 6-person table. I already pointed out in the rewatch notes for the earlier stuff that Jody’s living room has room for 6, but you know me and table meta. There’s 6 seats around this table, and one of them is for Kaia, though she never makes it to sit with them. At the moment, it’s just Alex and Jody, and all the rest are going to join in around them :D

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Thinking of: Claire comes in, smiles nervously at them all, breaks the tension asking Alex if she missed her and getting some snark in, and Jody hugs Claire waaay more than normal, her face over her shoulder betraying absolute relief, before she gets back to business and introduces Patience. Claire’s face falls, recognising all the hallmarks of being replaced - and Patience brought like 2 shirts with her or something, so has been borrowing Claire’s old clothes because Jody probably said it was okay (Patience seems like she would have asked :P) and here’s Claire, and… Yeah, I don’t think all of Claire’s initial reaction is just because she doesn’t believe in visions or whatever, but because she feels like Patience is an impostor. And a rival.

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I love Patience’s last look after Claire abruptly changes the subject on the awkward silence and charges off - “well, that went… about as terribly as it could have” :P

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Patience sitting next to Jody on the sofa probably can’t help either >.> Jody’s like a protective barrier between her and Claire - and Alex to an extent, just because they’re not on the same side.

I LOVE Claire slapping away Alex’s hand and Alex’s teasing look when she says “baby”. She’s soooo much more confident than we’ve ever seen her before, and she’s happy to tease, and to get deep without falling into her own trauma and not being able to get back out. In 11x12 she was still very hurt, and had only just made it to the surface of coping every day. In this episode she’s clearly much more settled and happy and feels a sense of belonging and purpose. She’d not even consider staying to hunt just because Claire needles her it’s the right thing to do, and I love that Alex has a job helping and healing people, after being indirectly responsible for so much death. Of course when there’s serious work to do and Jody needs her that beats everything, but she is so confident about what she’s doing.

Also just the detail that she’s the one who does antiseptic cream because anyone can theoretically do that but it’s showing Alex’s place as the qualified healer in the group. Based on how she gets deep with Claire AND Patience, I think that she may be a secondary emotional healer too, for stuff that’s not really a “Mom” problem for Jody.

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Claire says, “What about the girl?” *pause* “Kaia” trying the name out of size in her mouth for the first time, saying it weirdly soft and carefully… :’)

-

And then we cut to Kaia being discovered just as Claire says her name. And that shot introducing her by her hand - that she will die with her hand outstretched to Claire… Oh no….

-

Alex checking Jody will be okay without her before she leaves - it makes Claire suspicious because the tone is suggesting emotionally, not manpower. Jody’s holding off having the conversation with Claire and Alex knows it, and says she knew how Claire would react in the next scene with them… She’s got all their numbers

-

And Claire immediately challenges Jody to tell her, all bravado, and when she says she’s safe, Jody cracks and you can hear it in her voice - distress that Jody does not often show as she says “No you’re not!” and finally explains what Patience saw.

Having to tell someone you saw them die is a great intro >.> I mean, definitely worse than it turning out you stole their sweater :P

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Claire laughs it off but then her face falls as no one turns it into a joke, and she’s clearly starting to wonder by the time Jody leans in and insists Patience is the real deal

Claire immediately goes to the bargaining stage, and then denial, followed by anger and turning it into the ongoing argument about being allowed to hunt and how Jody has been stifling her and not allowing her to hunt. It’s the same argument as 11x12, and though we saw in 13x03 Jody stoically trying to accept Claire’s decision in her comments on her leaving, now we see that the argument has never really gone away, but they haven’t been tested by anything huge enough until now to work through it

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Oh Claire… Talking about not having enough time to plan and how it’s good to go charging in if people need saving. And saying she won’t end up dead… Alllll the irony for later :(

Jody accuses her of running away, and off Claire goes.

-

Patience watching all this from the sofa like… I’m… sorry…? Oh god this is awkward.

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Alex being competent :D (Also a good thing to establish if she’s going to have to keep ditching her job for monster autopsies and letting Claire hang around checking the system :P)

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Snark snark snark, A+ dynamic between Claire and Alex - I’m glad we see all the different levels of how well they know each other, like Alex and Patience being comfortable but not close, Claire barely knowing Patience, Claire REALLY getting on with Kaia, and of course Claire and Alex having a several years old relationship where they’ve warmed up to each other but still need to maintain a snarky exterior.

And like with Claire coming in the door, there’s a moment where it seems like Claire’s anxiously waiting on Alex’s approval, and is relieved when the snark comes which reassures her that they’re good and she hasn’t overstepped (especially as she had been needling her, and Claire’s been away from home for months).

-

“And I knew how you’d react”

*pause*

*deflection to snarking at her some more*

-

And then they get really deep about what Jody means to them and what she needs from them and who has been there for her… I don’t think Alex meant it that way and she immediately knows she implied Claire left them, but Claire does take it that way, and starts explaining how she felt, about why she couldn’t stay yet… And Alex points out that Jody *always* worries about her, whether she’s there or not. Which stops Claire short because it comes across as such a weighty declaration - the betrayal of Jody’s feelings of not being able to stop worrying about Claire no matter where she is, being so much deeper than just fussing about Claire not getting killed on her watch, which can be taken as regular over-protectiveness, especially when Jody is a hunter and sheriff so protecting people is her day-to-day… Even though Claire has started to think of Jody as her mom, she’s so used to being abandoned I guess it might be hard for her to accept people still care about her when she’s not around, and that she’s not better off elsewhere not getting in the way, and preempting abandonment.

And Alex changes the subject, and Claire looks at her fondly for doing that, and humouring her to help with the hunt.

-

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Claire looking at Kaia!!!

The MOMENT they did that eye thing with the close up staring I had to pause and squeal the first time because while I’d been looking forward to them interacting, I had NOT expected it to be blatantly signposted that they were about to form the most intense relationship of the episode after Claire and Jody’s arc. Like, I’d added up that Claire was the main character, Kaia was plot relevant, and we see them in the promo shots in 3 separate scenes talking alone that we knew of plus they appeared to be in the Bad Place alone together so I figured they were going to spend some time building up this relationship but hoooly crap they went for it.

-

Claire and Kaia both play it cool for the nurse, then leap into action.

From Kaia’s POV Claire might be an unusually young detective, or some sort of monster or angel… Perhaps it works best if we assume Kaia’s still worried about being kidnapped by angels, for most dramatic irony, that Claire, a former angel vessel herself, wanders in like hey there and Kaia is assuming yet another angel is coming for her.

Claire wanders in like “where are you going” and though she grins at her, taken in that light it’s very threatening… But then she starts talking about Kaia having the cops on her ass, which is the last thing Kaia would be worrying about.

“Who are you?” she asks, realising that Claire may not be an angel after all.

“I’m a friend of Sam and Dean Winchester” - that should be the all access card but she has no idea that Dean abducted Kaia at gunpoint and this is the worst way to make her trust Claire. But seeing that she’s human, Kaia makes her escape.

-

Kaia’s reaction to being confronted by one of these monsters in the real world, not in her dreams where “at least” they can stay if she doesn’t sleep, is brilliant. Of course she’d freeze in horror… As much as she’s used to running away from them, they’re not supposed to BE here.

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I love Claire’s BAMF confidence to just pull a knife and charge the thing - though of course a light stabbing doesn’t do much and she gets thrown. It takes teamwork with Jody to bring it down for her to get a good stab at it, so though she gets the kill it has to be a team effort, aka you need back up, you can’t rush in and do things on your own, Claire. And who knows how things would have gone if Jody hadn’t come to the hospital - I guess because Alex called her and said Claire had been by and found Kaia?

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“So let’s talk” It’s much more confrontational than how Claire then goes and talks to Kaia. I suppose because at that point she’s still running away, but somewhere between all this getting the monster in a body bag, cleaning up, getting it home, letting Kaia get dressed in something other than a hospital gown, Claire’s seen she’s just terrified and running, but not trouble herself… I mean, Kaia agreed to come with them, and is sitting quietly on the porch.

Idk why they are sitting out in front of the house when monsters are possibly after them :P

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Patience like yeeep I’m not ready for this when they unwrap their monster. Alex so casual, like, okay, we’re doing this…

Being raised by vampires probably does a number on your squeamishness. And since this is all technically for good rather than harming people, Alex has no issues with it at all.

-

Eeeeeeee Dreamhunter conversation!!

We’ve already picked over it so much >.>

Claire comes walking in all confident and opening up about the monsters - because she swaggers into every conversation, fight etc when she thinks she has the upper hand. Kaia is ready to open up, since Claire saved her, and explains what she can about the monsters and her dreams.

And then Claire assumes that Kaia is a hunter of sorts, who deals with these monsters like a BAMF - “so you fight them?” “No, I run” *Claire stares at her in horror, as it sinks in just how much Kaia must be scared and how she’s been running from monsters every time she dreams* “Sometimes they catch me,” Kaia admits because when we compare this to the scene in last episode with the awful group leader at the rehab place, she can’t tell the truth to anyone, but now Claire knows all about monsters and so the truth is not going to make Kaia look crazy…

“Is that how you got that?” Claire asks, spotting the scar, still sizing up exactly what is happening to Kaia, and Kaia admits she has other scars all over. At this point she’s clearly moved to trusting Claire and being relieved to unload a bit, even if she won’t look at her, yet.

Claire sees how upset this makes Kaia, the first notes of a gentle song start in the background to show we’re now bonding, and she immediately leaps to trying to make it all okay - to show her that scars are trophies and to be celebrated surviving these things. “Me too,” she says, unknowingly echoing the catchphrase of the last few months, since this episode pre-dates it. Taken in this context though, and the whole author is dead thing, it’s a powerful statement because in 13x09 Kaia’s interactions with men and monsters were all entitlement and even Jack was grabby hands and not knowing boundaries, and Dean in his fit of panic about Mary, threatened her with a gun and lost sight of her as a person - just wanted to use her for her powers, which is a blatant metaphor. Claire got bitten by a werewolf in 12x16 in an assault-coded attack, and in her earliest episodes back on the show had a lot of blatant near-misses, terror of nighttime attacks and the sketchy caravan people thing, and now when we meet her again she’s blasting away werewolves who terrorise little girls, and overcoming the old adversary. And wearing her scars with pride and no shame. And encourages Kaia to feel the same way, after being harassed by the monsters of her dark consciousness who’ve left their marks all over her.

Claire approaches this all with her reckless enthusiasm that makes her such a great lil Dean mirror (but also all her own self for all her other traits) - “Ghoul bite” she says like it’s the coolest thing ever, and immediately Kaia is smiling to see Claire open up and show her that she’s not alone or damaged in a way that will make people think less of her - because Claire at least will think it’s awesome. “Bar fight with a vampire… he threw me through a window.” She smiles completely pleased with herself for having lived such a badass life already. That she’s got these stories to tell. Kaia is captivated by now, wanting to know more about Claire, what other stories she’s got written on her body.

Claire smiles and meets her eyes and looks away, bashful.

“And this one?” Kaia reaches right into Claire’s space and brushes a finger over her forehead.

(Personal space? Never heard of it :P)

It’s set up as an accident (though of course it’s all a writing decision) in order to make Claire get off her guard and admit she’s not as cool as she makes herself sound sometimes, and not all her scars are real heroic battles. And it makes Kaia laugh, getting to see beyond Claire’s facade. Which, of course, is the big old Dean Winchester parallel and she’s been doing it all along, pretending one thing even when it’s blatantly obvious it’s not. She’s got better at it as she gets older, but Kaia still gets past that layer :D

They share a few glances and giggles, and then having got through enough of Kaia’s layers to establish trust and a sense of being comfortable together, Claire tries again, asking, “Kaia, what happened?” in the most gentle voice ever - because she’s learned to reach out to other people now, and how to judge when’s the time to ask without demanding.

And though Kaia looks scared, now we know she’ll talk.

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There’s a green AND red cooler behind Patience :D

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This monster has such a cool and disgusting design. I’m completely with Patience about not being able to look at it :P Alex is still wearing her scrubs from the hospital, completely professional.

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I pointed out in a post while doing the rewatch that Alex and Claire were both wearing black and white vertical stripes and then that Patience showed up wearing them too (Claire’s sweater) - I think this is the only scene you can tell, but Kaia has a sweater too and it’s got black and RED stripes, the only one of them to break the pattern, and, sadly, because she’s marked for death :(

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I love how Kaia says “it’s where that came from” and gestures the monster with an eyebrow alone. Good acting.

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Patience’s “ugh” face too. She is so the audience stand in here, the normal kid who has to stand in the room with a monster autopsy all of a sudden and it’s not even a big deal to anyone else here in a “what the fuck this can happen!?!?” kind of way :P

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Kaia lurks on the other side of the door as she explains, while Claire has moved into the room to watch the autopsy - Kaia’s even talking about doors to other worlds while she explains. She looks so small and separated from them. Probably more foreshadowing she’ll end up separated from them… “Something went wrong”

-

God that monster is disgusting. A+ design.

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Claire’s little smile as she realises she has a chance to save Sam and Dean. “The door’s still open!”

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20 minutes in and we see Sam n Dean enjoying roast lizard.

“It’s a lizard. It tastes like a lizard” is quite possibly the best line Dean’s ever had on the show.

I’ve seen a spectacular lack of irony about how Sam and Dean don’t need saving because they’ve survived this long and lol they’re just camping in the woods, like the very same writers who then let Bad Place Kaia overwhelm them in a fight didn’t let them sit down and roast an iguana. Like Sam and Dean are their own living entities who managed to survive this long in the woods without supervision, and like the eye of Sauron turning on them, once the writers are dealing with their lives again, everything goes to shit and the girlpower takes over.

So to be brief: Sam and Dean are used for the dramatic irony in Kaia’s comment which has been a theme all season that they say Mom is dead, Cas is dead, what’s burned stays dead, and we hop over to see Mary alive, or Cas waking up in the Empty. In this case, Kaia’s been persecuted by the Bad Place with an intent, because Bad!Kaia is after her for some reason, and won’t let her go (which is probably why she overloaded when she tried to leave the Bad Place via non-waking up means with Jack’s help - Bad!Kaia looms up in her vision and stops her from going), and Sam and Dean were just chucked here. Bad!Kaia is probably stalking them the whole time waiting for an opening but she absolutely is not bothering them like she’s had it in for her alternate self, I suppose seeing them as a curiosity and probable dinner for her big friend.

They’ve survived this long because they’re not important.

They’ve survived this long because they’re competent at being flung into the woods with nothing to their name, because we’ve seen them do it before - literally last midseason opener had the same concept :P

But they’re not surviving as a fuck you to Kaia’s presumption they’re dead, and they’re not living entities with any ability to shape the story to their favour to prove a point :P Sheesh…

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Anyway Sam refuses to eat his lizard because it’s gross and he has hope that they can escape - it parallels the start of the season, that Sam has hope, that he’s holding on to change their circumstances. Dean is wallowing in the idea that they’re going to be stuck, that hope has probably petered out and the portal closed, and he he has to adapt and resign himself to their fate. That no one knows how to get here, that MAYBE Jack might find a way back to them but who knows what happened there - they don’t so all they can do is walk and survive and at least get used enough to this situation to eat a lizard and not go hungry and lose strength over nothing.

And Sam’s denial, of food, and that hope is over, is not healthy for him, though it bears out, if anything it enforces his beliefs - and there is NOTHING wrong with hope but spreading yourself thin, not eating, not living for yourself in the meantime… They need to combine their approaches, to mix hope with self-care.

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Ugh, what a nasty looking spear :(

-

Patience, 100% grossed out by the monster autopsy, has decided that she has done her part and she really doesn’t need to be here to oversee nonsense like this :P

Alex immediately finds her, and sees what’s up.

“Is that what you want?” she asks, sounding surprised. Given Patience told her that “maybe my dad will take me back” it’s clear Alex knows pretty much everything we know about Patience, that she walked out on her dad in order to deliver the message. She’d also know, then, how determined Patience was to do it, and how important it was to her to get to Jody and pass on the warning. Patience hasn’t seen any action but at the very least she’s bonded to seeing through the story connected to her vision. Alex understands that Patience has made a personal sacrifice for this, and that asking her dad to take her back is going to have more connotations than just going home because it all got a bit too ikky - it’s putting visions behind her, putting this whole thing behind her, and wanting to be normal again. And Alex, as I said, seems to have everyone’s number :P

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(She used to be very good at picking out marks >.>)

-

She snarks that Patience will pretend she’s “Little miss perfect and not a powerful psychic” like Patience can’t do both. I mean come on, give her a chance, she’s got an in built perfectionist streak that’s going to end up applied to hunting just as hard as it was applied to school, just watch if we get a show :P But yeah, no, the connotation is to go home and just do exams and try to be normal. The message coming from Alex is blatantly obvious, as we’ve been seeing from the start - the Alex of 9x19 and then the Alex of 11x12 are both gone, and instead we have an Alex who found her balance, and a true motivation.

-

“Well, you gotta bury 'em somewhere.” Honestly at this point this is when I realised Alex is the secret weapon to this whole project because she’s extremely funny and because she’s got dark dark humour, and that dark dark history, and that doesn’t go away, she just channels it into being this domestic, loving healer type who’s got a dark streak miles deep.

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In any case, Patience needs to do the whole “refusing the call” thing a few times because she has a main character arc of her own which we frustratingly don’t get to see the end results of because the vision that took her here and ended the episode with coming true wrong, is a huge development for her, but we’re gonna need the show to find out how it affected her. I mean it’s great to leave it all hanging but graaaarrrr I neeeed it nooowww

-

The story, of course, has different ideas. Patience, it says, you’re one of us, you’re a main character here! So rather than let her go, it gives her a vision to make her immediately have a dramatic concern to protect them, and so she comes running back and of course she has the perfect getaway vehicle in her massive car…

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I would LOVE to know what Claire and Kaia were talking about downstairs together, but I think it’s also just nice to know they chose to sit close together and talk when we weren’t looking at them, that they bonded closer… Because of course this is something that Berens has helped write before - the mixtape scene is the prime example of showing that there’s a whole iceberg under the surface of DeanCas interaction and that they know each other better than we will ever know them, because they get all that time when they’re not on screen having adventures to get to know each other, if the story will let them. And clearly it does, because Dean made Cas a mixtape.

Anyways, Claire and Kaia, who have a gentle, flirty dynamic, spent at least 10-20 minutes talking in private :’)

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Claire is prone to looking at Patience’s lips too. Oops. I guess she’s just surrounded by cute girls so what to do??

She and Patience have the vision as the core conflict, that Patience feels Claire blew off her vision and she accuses her that she came here to save her and Claire just wants to fight monsters… And Kaia is the one who intervenes in the fight and convinces Claire to be rational and go. I LOVE the angry stare-off between Claire and Patience though - that Patience thinks that Claire thinks she’s a fake, when Claire’s a lil freaked out and putting on a lot of bravado about it.

And the camera going between them, to Kaia who reaches in and pulls Claire out of defying Patience for more bravado.

But also that in the wider narrative this episode is set up around Patience’s vision and her misinterpreting it as being about Claire dying - but it’s Kaia, and that teaches Claire to have less bravado, to rely on the others and to have her “army” as she thinks of them, of support to plan and help and work as a team.

For now, Kaia’s intervention is enough to soften her, just as her overall meaning to Claire will soften her :(

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Kaia’s face as she watches the monsters smash up the house. Claire’s as she has to accept this is really happening and Patience was right - which means her vision about Claire will happen…

Patience just annoyed no one will listen to her

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TIME FOR D-TRAIN

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I love how Patience even thinks for a moment the National Guard might help in a monster situation.

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Donna gets the best entrance this episode. Sorry Claire :P

Now she’s here they really get to work. Donna gets out her weapons to badass music, drops the hilarious Minnesota line, and Jody calls Kaia aside to work out where they’re supposed to go to find that door.

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With the help of Alex beating Sam Winchester in a game of wifi tag

-

Getting in another reaction shot of Patience on “who knows howta use a flamethrower?” was genius.

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Jody’s resigned look as she revs up for another stay back and wait speech - wheedling Claire. She looks over and sees they’re all watching her, wondering what Jody is asking her perhaps, or knowing it. Kaia is in the foreground, and Jody says “Kaia and the girls” and I watched and giffed waaaay too recently for my Dean n Cas are in love gif series, 5x04 where Dean says to 2009!Dean that he’s going to feed all his friends into the meat grinder - Cas too??

I think Jody thinks of Alex and Patience more as the girls under her protection because they have a pre-existing relationship, even if Patience’s is newer, while Kaia is still basically unknown to her. But that just implies further that Kaia is under Claire’s protection instead, already. Before Claire says anything.

I cry a lot about them already :P

And Jody’s surprise when Claire gives in with only a glance over at Kaia because she was expecting the fight. She’s smart enough not to throw that back at Claire and turn it into a victory or demand to know what changed.

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Sam belatedly seeming to think they’re in a different universe, not a different world - and the fact they HAVE that distinction in the first place… I think it may just be settling in how far from home they are, and how difficult it will be to get back.

Again, Dean concerned with the practicalities, cleaning his boots, grumbling, accepting that this is pretty much their life now while Sam is still philosophising and coming to terms with it.

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Bad!Kaia has some serious moves :D Just thinking of the spear connection, when they fought Ramiel they got the better of him. But she’s small and fast and has clearly learned to fight from the very start and the spear is a natural extension of herself. It’s not some big showy fight, she’s small and strong and wants them knocked out and on the floor.

-

Donna knowing they found the right place because the Impala is parked outside of it. Perfect :D

This is all she does this episode except for driving the Winchesters home - just telling Jody and Donna where to go.

-

And they march on in like the competent badasses they are :D

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The weirdness of what they’re walking into slowly sinks in as they pass the melted angel blade - Jody knows what one is from 12x06, where she would be more like the average hunters who, like Asa, think of it as so special to keep back and put in a felt-lined box. She’s never seen wingprints before either. And then there’s the glow of the portal from upstairs…

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Claire sits in silent contemplation, and Kaia takes it as her chance to come reassure Claire, since Claire sat with her and made her feel better last night. Claire smiles to herself before she moves over, happy to see her. And Kaia watches her closely, leaning around to catch Claire’s expression, so she can diagnose that Claire is scared…

Here we get to the most important lines for Claire as a Dean mirror - the thing Dean’s been grappling with for years and Berens had a whole section about in 12x22 where Dean talked about how they might die, when they thought they were facing their end in the suffocating Bunker. Claire sees her end, and expresses it the same way Dean does - she wanted to go down swinging, doing something heroic and good that would mean she lived a good life. Something to prove to herself, in death, that she had saved herself :( I mean, Dean’s faced this a lot, in season 3, in season 10 especially. But Claire is young and has only ever really known the swagger of being a hunter, tempered by mistakes and losses, but nothing that could set her back more than her drive to do it.

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I think Kaia sees her as a real hero because of the way she saved her, because of the way she talks about her life, and seeing her as confronting that she wanted to die heroically, knowing that this is how Claire feels, that she’s all in for being a swaggering hero if she could be…

-

Stuff like “get myself killed” and “sit back and let Jody handle it” remind us how young Claire is, and how Jody still fills a motherly role in protecting her. Though Claire is now presumably legally an adult with no more coming of age milestones or will be very soon (she must be coming up on 21 if her birthday is towards the end of a season) this is like the last hurdle to adulthood - learning to be responsible and for Jody to trust her with her own life, a struggle that goes both ways between them and sadly eats up Kaia in the learning of it >.>

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“But Sam and Dean saved my life and I *can’t* sit this one out” - Claire carries on talking and starts to talk herself into it. Kaia listening, sees where Claire’s heart is, and though she has no love lost for Sam and Dean, sees what they mean to Claire - that at the very least she has them to thank for ever meeting Claire, who saved her life, so that passes on… And so she appeals to Claire’s hero side, knowing it will be what Claire needs. And that for Claire she would do just about anything. She’d go with her into the Bad Place, if that is where Claire needed to go.

-

God I wish they had kissed at that moment :P The camera cuts away and we go to Jody and Donna’s badass scene with the monsters.

-

“Ooofta.”

Donna seeing something cosmically huge for the first time, and finding proof that hunting is not just the ghosts and vampires that come through the towns you look after, but sometimes on a scale unimaginable to the daily life of a sheriff…

Jody knows too but she also knows this is where she has to go so off she charges - And when Donna pulls her back she’s still staring at the portal with a finality, and certaintly. And fear. Gosh she’s good at this whole thing :’D

“I’m going in,” she says, firmly, the next shot showing her less scared and more resolute. “If I don’t, she will. Donna, I cannot lose another child.” And then she turns and gives the spooked Donna that sad, almost farewell smile, because she doesn’t know she can come back from this and I suppose she trusts Donna to be her back up here, to stop Claire going in after her, or to come with her and help…

Who knows because the monsters shake them out of it, and they have to check it out. Perhaps she was going to leave Jody behind but she just can’t while while there are monsters there. Her instinct is not to rush in, and it’s to protect everyone around her, and that ultimately saves her from rushing in and doing a Claire, and getting Donna killed.

But it still gets them to a dead end hiding in the car, without back up of all the girls.

(Wow all the Jody scenes are so powerful… Kim Rhodes just fills the screen all the time and I love her. An incredible amount.)

-

Mislabelling - Dean calls “Darth Dickwad” “he” when talking about the dinner bell which I think also some of the less well-inclined towards this episode peeps have taken as gospel truth, that the thing in the hood was some other creature, male the whole time until it revealed itself with Kaia’s face like a shapeshifter, instead of just being her the whole time. (She’s had boobs the whole time, it’s not a good theory but if you want a man to be the only one strong enough to take out other men in a fight, sure :P)

But in meta terms, the label being wrong is a long long theme, and Dean misunderstanding the hooded figure’s gender because he’s making this assumption too or just isn’t objectifying her figure where it’s visible through the robes and just assuming that slim and strong means a small but very dangerous guy… Who knows :P He’s not really had a good look at her.

It would be SO easy to write “she” and not think about this concept or have Jensen mis-say “she” knowing it’s Yadi or a female double on set so the “He” has to be very deliberately said and written. That there is a meta point to Dean being wrong, and again with the labelling.

-

I like how Claire’s like, “Patience, gimme your keys” - not can you drive us to this spot, but I wanna do some illegally fast stunt driving to get us there on time and this isn’t a debate :P I guess just her being a leader in attitude as well.

-

I just love this badass set up of Jody and Donna in the car together, mirroring 11x04, but in a badass fight scene, while Sam and Dean took the pose to be a time to talk about feelings. Perfect.

-

Donna just says “alrighty then,” not sentiments, and then the monsters start clambering on the car and they’re shooting.

-

Jody’s FACE when she sees the girls with the flamethrower.

Honestly the fact Claire took the flamethrower off… And no one picked it up??? Pfft.

-

Claire and Jody go through a silent exchange of their argument as Claire realises it’s the portal, and bolts towards it, Jody chasing after her.

-

Patience and Alex standing there like… should we be doing something about this?? And the monsters???

-

“Oh hell,” Jody says, seeing Claire has found the portal and is already sizing it up, getting ready to walk into it. And it’s getting smaller, meaning that it’s now or never. And there’s no time for any more arguments about it. Claire saved her life and it’s not like a weird barter system or anything but maybe she can trust Claire… it’s almost like in the new star wars where Leia tells Poe off for always jumping in an x-wing and blowing things up without thinking but then when an emergency comes, the response is, yes jump in an x-wing and blow something up :P

That arc was more strongly focussed on his leadership but tbh Claire and Poe maybe share a personality type. She’d be one hell of a pilot.

-

ANYWAY Just avoiding talking about Jody having to let Claire go into the portal and saying “I know” and giving her that little wink, like, I love you but it’s your life and I can’t stop you, and maybe we need someone to swagger in like the big hero and just get it done, and I’m so incredibly proud that you have this instinct to do the big hero stuff…

… Ohhh this is all hurting soooo much because of how it ends :(

There’s just so much power in Jody’s looks, you can SEE how much she loves Claire and how much she doesn’t want her to go but she knows she has to.

-

Broken up with Donna’s “oh there he is! Hiya buddy!” because in the opening we see Donna’s reaction to seeing a vampire for the first time of total horror, but now she’s adapted, it’s no different to growing up in a hunting culture in Minnesota… Sure the things are weirder, but it’s cross-applicable skills :’)

She may talk down to the monsters to make them seem less scary for the girls, but when there’s tons, and she knows the odds, she doesn’t make a grand stand, she tells the girls to run and covers their escape.

“Little help!?” she calls as casually as she can up the stairs, while probably Patience shrieks “HELP”

-

This distracts Jody from her moment with Claire is already looking to the portal again, resolved to go.

She looks to Jody for final approval and Jody does that amazing little nod and “Go” because to her they already resolved it and they’re wasting time - or at least that’s what she wants to convey to Claire while her eyes shine with tears and she watches with utterly restrained sadness and fear.

-

Claire nods, and looks over at Kaia, who just looks freaked out

Because she’s agreed to go to The Bad Place, and oh boy that’s all hitting home right now

“I’ll protect you,” Claire says, full of confidence that she can do this, and holding out her hand, and they Legend of Korra their way into the rift… But this is the beginning of a painful story, not the end of one, and so Claire leads and Kaia follows. The music kicks up a bit of intensity with a guitar riff as they take hands, and through they go.

On the other side, Claire immediately scopes out the portal to check they have a way back, while asking if Kaia is okay, in full hunter mode. Kaia grabs at Claire’s arms to find her hand again, and pulls her towards the sound of the monsters, towards her nightmares, resolved to do this.

-

Meanwhile: some fun throwing around of furniture, Alex shooting like she’s at a shooting range, Patience shrieking some more

-

Claire saves the boys. “My hero” Dean says, recognising the give and take of saving lives that they do in this industry. Owing one to Claure is something to process later but they’re going to have to think of her as an adult and fellow hunter now.

-

She’s a year off how old Sam was in season 1.

-

They sort of don’t even question how Claire is here - she came with Kaia and they were vaguely local to Jody when it all went down and that’s enough to bridge the gap at least for getting the hell out of here and assuming they’re not hallucinating :P

-

Sam still has to ask about Jack, though. Of course. Kaia shrugs and says he must be at the other place because, well, he was trying to get there. And whether she can see it or not - if she has some impression from when she was screaming and melting all the angels or what…

Good enough for now, monster is coming :P

-

I LOVE DONNA REASSURING PATIENCE THAT SHE GOT THIS

“let’s get to work”

Not “we’ve got work to do” but recognising they’re already hard at it, recontextualising an iconic show line less to be about expectations of work later and more to just getting down and doing things :P

-

WHY DID THEY STOP FOR A LINE UP AT THE PORTAL JUST RUN THROUGH IT IT’S OKAY IT’S DEFINITELY THE RIGHT PORTAL

JUST GO FULL TILT INTO IT AND BE DONE WITH THE BAD PLACE

-

Kaia hearing Bad!Kaia coming - or sensing her. She has great reflexes to shove Claire out the way - or some connection to her Bad Place Self… And I wonder at what Bad!Kaia was trying to do - if she wanted to kill Claire, or if she knew Kaia would jump in front of the spear.

-

Anyway OW OH NO KAIA OH NO OH NO OH NO

This sucks but I’m taking it all on the chin on the absolute understanding that we’re getting Kaia back if we get this show and the story hasn’t even begun yet and that Kaia is going to be so utterly central to it this is only the beginning for her character and she’s going to emerge like a beautiful butterfly from this lil set back, and no one stays permanently dead, especially not when they’re introduced with a romance and then their evil double seemingly pops up before the end credits :P

-

Anyway in her last moments Kaia struggles to look at Claire, and grasps for her hand, squeezing it so tight she compresses Claire’s fingers, and Claire is just stunned, whispering “Kaia” to round off how she first said her name at the beginning of the episode when she had no idea what it would mean to her in the next 24 hours.

Claire can hardly look away as Kaia dies, despite the sound of the approaching monster.

-

That’s a big boy.

I wonder what Donna would say to him :P

-

Claire goes in a full snarling rage to attack the hooded figure, and is restrained and pulled back

-

Patience gets in a great shot which knocks back a single monster that was running straight at her, after a few hilariously bad shots

Her look of stunned horror is such a hilarious part of this episode. We need more newbie hunters who aren’t just like, victim of the week or whatever, they’re press-ganged into the life and it’s like what the heeeell why am I dooooing this?? :P

Well I mean we could have a whole first season of her figuring it out XD everyone seems so gung-ho to be a hunter or get protected and stay back. She’s not just a random civilian defending herself, she’s literally grappling with if this is her life or not and all signs point to yes despite how horrifying she finds it :P

-

Aaaand they come back through the portal and it closes and Claire wails the most anguished “Noooooooooo!!”

And that’s when Patience comes in with the others and realises Claire isn’t even hurt - but a part of her just died

-

Jody silently asking Sam what happened - is Kaia okay? And he just shakes his head.

SILENT COMMUNICATION. Love it. Love that I still get an itty bitty fix of Jam in the middle of all this :P

Sam is still up for communicating with Jody - Dean’s just looking on in sympathetic sadness to what Claire is going through.

-

The back and forth between Claire in agony and Kaia lying dead on the ground just drives home what Patience is realising - that she misread everything and it was Claire in mourning and Kaia’s death that she saw, but the details not giving her enough context to realise it wasn’t what it seemed.

-

And, yeah, Jody holding Claire like Claire held Amelia when she died - ouchies :(

But Jody soothing Claire… oh my heart. Jody has gone through about 1000 different emotions this episode and it’s been AMAZING. If anyone thinks the girls can’t act then Jody would still carry it for them.

-

Sam and Dean respectfully wearing black as the girls get on with cleaning up the house. Blah blah people covered Dean saying “i” and Sam pointing out how shut down Claire was as a parallel to how Dean was at the start of this season - so much about grief and loss this year, again.

Jody’s got a lot of mixed blessings - Claire is back but broken, her house is smashed up but she has a lot of new hands to help her fix it. And they saved Sam n Dean but there may still be a whole bunch of monsters around town for them to deal with.

-

What a great sentiment to define this show’s place in the mythos: “We will handle it. C'mon, you guys take care of the world! We got Sioux Falls covered.” Showing they have a place, respecting Sam n Dean’s importance to the greater narrative, but also defining the show as having no huge mytharc because you can’t compete with Sam n Dean on the cosmic level, but you can have a personal level mytharc - something like Bad Place Kaia and the emotional drama that would bring - to still have high stakes and high personal meaning for it all… And we’re invested in all these characters, the ones we’ve known forever because we’ve known them forever and seen them grow into this, the new ones because of their potential and what they will bring to the dynamics of the show…

-

And Sam and Dean love Jody so much and she waves goodbye to them and sends them back to the main story, and sighs and goes to see how Claire is doing.

-

Still crying in her/Patience’s room (they need to settle that :P)

“You were right,” she says because this whole episode was stacked against her over-confidence, to bring her down to have a more careful approach to hunting, to sadly learn a lesson that was building all the time we knew her as an aspiring hunter. Carelessness is an interesting flaw, and over-confidence, and I don’t want to see them disappear from Claire - and judging by the end monologue they haven’t, she’s just reapplying them and learning to be a little less hasty, a little more reliant on teamwork… But yeah, I think Claire is an interesting mess, and she’s so young and started so young on the show we’ve seen every single one of her traumas collect together to make who she is.

(And Kaia is owed like a billion times the character development off of Claire’s pain if they get the show so that she can have it paid back for dying like this for Claire’s >.>)

-

“I said I’d protect her,” she says, her voice breaking and a tear coming out of her eye - c'mon, people really think Kathryn can’t act? She’s breaking my heart :P Bringing it back to Kaia and that’s when it makes Claire cry, to think of her promise to Kaia, that Kaia took the stray bullet for her (… and the spin off had better subvert the heck out of that trope >.>) and Claire failed to protect her like she’d thought she could.

Having had someone to protect - and losing someone - makes her finally understand Jody, and she mentions the feeling of losing someone you can’t protect, that you felt that much love for whether it’s a kid or your first crush that really seemed like it might be something real and good for you…

-

And I mentioned riiight at the top, that Claire never got the speech from Jody that she gave Alex and Patience, because we saw Claire being sent off to Jody without hearing Jody make her any promises. So it’s like, Jody finally has an in to reach out to Claire and for Claire to listen, the equivalent of the end of 9x19 or 13x03 for Alex and Patience. “You don’t have to do this alone” - which is also the message of the show, that they’re a family, that they’re not alone when all the family work together.

“When you’re ready, if you want, we’re all here for you.” And that’s Jody’s final invitation for Claire to stay for real.

-

One last humour beat with Donna, Alex and Patience, who are definitely going to be the most fun characters in any combination or all of those 3 :D

Alex giving her a “Welcome to the family” is a lighter version of the heartfelt stuff Jody just said to Claire - extending an invitation to the newbie to the dynamic that she’s passed their bonding ritual of fighting side by side and she’s no longer just an awkward house guest, but one of them.

-

Jody comes in and stops to survey them, perhaps giving an uncertain verdict on if they’re keeping Claire.

Maybe just to ask them what takeout they want. She probably told them she was gonna go talk to Claire, though, so they’re all wondering about her.

-

Claire continues her hunter journal, now writing from the heart, starting a new page of her life.

Coming downstairs to join the family.

there’s 4 chairs that survived the attack on the house - which the established family (Alex, Jody, Patience and Donna) are sitting in, and a folding chair set out for Claire if she wants it, and a different coloured plate (actually, Patience, the other newbie to the settled family dynamic in Sioux Falls since Claire left, has a green plate too, but a real chair). And the 6th chair is just gone. Kaia is not currently a part of this family set up, but the space remains for her.

-

Claire monologues basically stuff to that effect - she’s staying because they’re going to get strong, and fight her chosen battle. She thinks. She mentions “family” “army” and “need” which in the SPN language has a lot of mixed connotations - family is good, army is a bit uncertain about if you’re using them for the right reasons, and “need” has a lot of back and forth about if it’s good or bad, to use people or to be incomplete without them, for good or bad. In this context it all for now comes across as a very positive message of unity and strength between them all, but idk if it’s healthy long-term for Claire based on the critique to these words in the main show, or if she’s escaping to a world governed by Jody’s heart, where these things might be less dramatic and painful :P

-

“They think I’m staying because I’m broken” I guess it’s pretty open among them all how wrecked Claire is about Kaia - they all know there was something special or that something about it hit Claire very hard and maybe they can think it was losing someone she swore to protect in battle, especially sacrificing herself for Claire, or maybe one or the other of them has gleaned how Claire’s heart was broken too.

-

I love the last glad look Jody gives Claire, happy to see she’s come down to join them. The others are chatting without particularly directed eye contact as they pass around the food as a symbolic thing of unity.

-

“The thing that killed Kaia is still out there” she says as we see the now familiar opening of a portal.

“I don’t care if I have to tear another hole in the universe” - I think this phrasing is particularly ominous given season 13 as a whole with the AU hopping and Billie’s warning about AU hopping as knocking over the whole cosmic house of cards. Even without what happens in this show, in the main show we still have Jack in the AU with Mary, and some drama with Michael sure to still unfold. And I’m really starting to worry that this is all still a red herring for the real problems, caused by universe hopping. The phrase “tear another hole” is so violent, and she’s got Winchester determination to do it at any cost which is reflecting back on them, not just in general but even just last episode they were at an any costs struggle to get to Mary including tearing holes in the universe when they were told not to.

And finally the dramatic irony - Claire looks into the camera and says “we’re going to find it and I’m going to kill it” and “it” pulls back the hood to reveal she’s been Bad Place Kaia all along, and now she’s here with an agenda…

Which goes with, as I was saying earlier, all the dramatic irony through all of season 13 about alternate universes and not knowing the state of things, misinterpretations, mislabelling and generally getting things very very wrong, when we know better. We are allowed to see there’s still hope for Kaia in the long run and that Claire’s mission is so VERY much more complicated than she thinks it is. One thing is certain - she is NOT going to accomplish this goal and we know it as soon as Bad!Kaia pulls back her hood :P

-

NOW GIVE US THIS SHOW SO WE CAN SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEEEEXT


	11. 13x11

I take back at least 5 of the recent snide comments about Sam’s jacket. D:

… aaarghhh being non-US is a pain. For having to rely on downloads, anyway. Pretty much just that :P 

well it’s nearly 5 but I have a download which started with a bunch of static over Donna recap I don’t need, and then in to a vampire recap…

I love that it shows us Dean being a vampire, and the time he was turned, just because it really ought to be more of a thing, even as a lighthearted “I got turned into a vampire once but I’m fine” like idk in 12x16 trying to reassure Claire or something :P Well, no, but you know what I mean. Typical Dean!girl complaint that they don’t spend enough time harping on all the various traumatic things he’s been through, even if some of them are 1 episode MotW things which don’t earn mytharc “remember this?” nods 7 seasons later.

-

That was a very short recap, scratchy bit I skipped aside.

-

Well this is a horrifying open :D Nice serial killer basement you got there. The same playing music while doing something horrific thing as Athena in Davy’s last episode, but she was just being an undertaker doing her job, and this is clearly the baddie of the week at work, with his serial killer wall and leaving blood splatters on all his dirty horrifying equipment.

Still, you gotta have music while you work.

-

I can’t prove anything withthis level of CBA but the truck stop looks like the one Sam got snatched from in 2x21, just because it’s small and single story and all. It’s probably been a bunch of other things knowing this show, like, idk, 4x01 and 10x03 and no one’s ever added it all up :P

Other thoughts: it’s “manny’s” but the Y is out turning it into “MANN ’S” which means once again I’m just gonna say toxic masculinity may be the bad guy and it’s not exactly subtle :P

-

If this is Donna’s niece I love her already because of her bumper stickers - anti-guns and “think globally act locally”… the anti-gun sentiment is especially amusing because of the jokes about Donna’s arsenal… There’s a social responsibility to actually advocate AGAINST guns, but the entire monster hunter subculture is indistinguishable from weirdoes in the woods with a stockpile of weapons, as Victor pointed out for us back in season freakin 2. As local law enforcement it’s more likely Donna would have access to and comfort with weapons and an ideal scenario is that people know about monsters in general and are equipped to fight them, that is, the law enforcement like Jody and Donna and other hunter-cops who actually can turn it into a part of their regular job, with the emotional responsibility less about crazy revenge missions because no one else will do it… But you know, that and an anti-gun sentiment completely undermine the show’s entire set up, which is why this show has a bizarre second face of being equally favourite of republicans and democrats, because the take-it-into-your-own-hands and collect guns for legitimate self-defence scenarios super appeals to them.

IRL there are no monsters except the ones we make, is all I’ll say >.>

But in the context of the show, and especially as she’s gonna get kidnapped, the fact this world has different rules aka legitimate danger to personal safety from monsters, means the show’s social conscience is always going to be skewed and conflicted, and the fact she’s against guns is potentially not going to look good given her status as an innocent civilian who has no idea of the irony of her stance being undermined by the existence of monsters and her aunt’s legitimate giant gun and flamethrower collection being a lifesaving boon >.>

-

Oh, gross, close ups on eating, making it look really horrific, with red tomato soup (blood) and slicing into a steak with a squelch (self-explanatory).

This is gonna be an arty, violent, gross episode, isn’t it? :P Mental note to try and catch the director. Because with this voice over about psalms or something there’s definitely a sort of ~mood~ being set.

-

Christ, the population of this diner is basically the cast of The Adventure Zone’s latest thing (which is playing some cryptids in the woods Supernatural D&D knock off literally called “Monster of the Week” and I’m gonna keep recommending it :P) - anyways if you’ve seen the fanart I’ve been reblogging there’s literally a character people are headcanoning to look almost exactly like this person with the curly hair. Minus the bunny rabbit.

I like the Aliens Are Watching Us guy as well. There was a conspiracy guy in 12x15 (also Davy) so I guess he’s not done with this concept of people enjoying the wacky stories without realising they’re a shade off, Ronald Resnik style. (Perez is possibly competing to be the new Edlund, if Yockey is taking after Robbie in tone… aka gently petting existing characters on the head while introducing amazing one offs)

-

Anyways definitely feeling the vibe of Would Not Go In This Place Unless Truly Desperate they want us to get :P

-

Okay the cashier is super creepy up close, taking too much delight in his power over her ability to leave and his leisure to decide if her ID is valid or not and mocking her name.

(Pointing out that “Hanscum” is old English is asking us to go look it up and ponder how it relates, right?)

-

Oh boy and there’s the request for her to smile that makes him a Grade A Creep whether he’s the monster or not.

-

So many creepy trucks and vans, the “Jesus Saves” van looking anything but salvation, and probably ANOTHER fake out bad guy with the window washer, just here to scare her… Holding up the window washer thingy like an axe murderer…. Whether he is affiliated with the murderer or not, we get a lingering shot on him and a red STOP beside his head

-

Aaand someone slashed her tyre while she was there….

Oh no, caltrops. It’s a trap :(

AAAAH scary masked guy!

not the same mask as in the promo pictures, just a bag over his head and goggles. This time referecing over to 13x05 and the plague doctor masks - the same huge dead eyed look they have without any of the style :P Theeemes for the season though.

-

Oh no, we start the episode on Sam trying to have a lie in… Already awake before his alarm then grumpily staying in bed another two and a half hours. #relatable

is he okay?

I mean I know in general he is Not Okay but I guess this is going to take some unpicking :P

…

OH NO he resisted PANCAKES.

Dean is up and about and enjoying being home with comforts around him, and Sam…

Is still in bed at 10. I may cry.

-

Oh thank god Donna is calling him to get him to move.

He’s resisted food which means everyone narrowing their eyes at him not touching his lizard in 13x10 gets a cookie for pointing out his issues and how he handles them re: food. I know lethargy and not wanting to get out of bed are huge signs of depression but we rarely see that side of Sam manifest, and mostly just see him casually not eating or having much interest in food offered to him so I think it may be one of the first times the story is actually set up to genuinely call attention to him having a depression lie-in and refusing to come out and get pancakes that Dean is making to celebrate having a kitchen again.

-

Anyway, now we get Donna angst. Hearing her cry is the absolute worst.

It’s such a sharp shock, tbh, to go from Wayward Sisters where she was shown off as the fun comic relief, and have her in the same coat and all suddenly speaking in such a tiny voice, and sitting helplessly in her great big D-TRAIN truck which was like the cavalry arriving and betraying a character that pretty much never DOESN’T want to make a fun entrance and lighten the mood…

Oh Donna. :(

(This is especially painful having watched all the WS episodes up to this point in the last few months)

-

“BREAKDOWN” appears over Donna pulled over to the side of the road, having her quiet breakdown over this, in an episode about serial killers engineering a breakdown on the side of the road, after we saw Sam having a silent breakdown this morning

Lovely.

-

Someone turned the angst dial all the way back up to 11 after the break it was taking.

-

The Impala rolls respectfully and quietly up to Donna.

She looks small :(

-

I’d guess she’s apologising for calling them because it’s pretty much The Next Day or thereabouts give or take driving time. Like, she’d be assuming they need their “Just back from a parallel universe” downtime.

Also because if we add any extra time instead of assuming it’s been back to back since, like, 12x19, then the tension about Cas evaporates and they leave him for weeks.

So let’s say they saw Donna like, 2 days ago max.

-

Oh no and she feels the guilt of inspiring her to go off on her adventure, because she had fun and talked about it. This is not how fault works, D-Train :( You did nothing wrong. It’s the serial killer who took her, no one else.

-

Sam tells her to just focus on the case rather than think about it which is A+ coping methods and how you end up like how Sam was this morning

-

Ew, Doug is here

-

Oh no Dean is leaving Sam and Donna together. Dean, no, you’re the chirpy pancake-making one today - you have to prop ‘em up :P

-

Oh boy, this is the real FBI isn’t it? They were in the promo…

“First off, I’m not your son.” Dean straightening up and trying to fake-authority figure bluster past the confidence of real authority.

Doug diving in to rescue him may be the only way out he has?

“Company man. You should have told me.”  
“Didn’t get a chance.”

I think Dean doesn’t know the codes to pass as FBI with whatever they’d immediately say to identify themselves with casual ease - like in 12x06 where at the hunter party he doesn’t know not to say wendigo? There’s just some stuff he probably can’t know without, like, literally being the FBI and having their specific swagger and way of talking.

e.g. I don’t think Dean would say “Company man” without sounding like he got it from TV

Oh dear, he doesn’t have the field office - yeah he just diiiives around that one.

Not here on official business, the victim is my cousin, I’m just here to get some answers.

Makes Donna on a close family level to them - or at least that she’s another branch of the same family officially like what Doug might think watching this exchange, knowing Dean is not Donna’s brother/husband/whatever else on the closest level would make them share a niece.

… Obviously also a lovely message about how Donna’s business is family business for them

-

“You and Donna are related!?”

A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO?

How long was Dean chilling and making pancakes and not calling Cas??? Asmodeus has HAD to have had an accidental “is Dean trying to sext Cas?” confusion over the texts he’s been getting in this time period.

… the fact that Cas is back next episode and for all intents and purposes the promo pics and premise would make me think it’s Buckleming but it’s actually Yockey and BL have 13x13 is like the one thing keeping me going :P

-

I hope I have that the right way around… Literally panic-checking my 13x12 tag before I continue, just for Cas’s sake

-

“Amanda Tapping directed the episode written by Steve Yockey” Mmmmmmmm

Okay, soul soothed, continuing to watch Dean blustering through pretending Wayward Sisters was a family reunion, which is also adorable that Donna used an emergency family reunion as the excuse to go.

-

Well at least the FBI already seem to have done most of the work with having a map with red string, names and other victims. This parallels directly to the serial killer’s collection, the red string mirroring the blood splatters that guy was leaving on it.

Pretty much gonna assume Mr FBI is the serial killer, or else as much of a problem as him.

-

Donna looks so tiny in this room full of men.

-

“Troopers got an anonymous tip” aka there’s something fishy about it being called in - if Mr FBI is the killer, it makes his job more effective than waiting around for someone to find the car so he can get his rocks off on chasing himself around in circles :P

-

Bleeech Doug putting a hand on Donna’s back to reassure her.

If you hadn’t gathered I’m super not a fan of Doug being back because I think it’s ridiculous to inflict another Doug on Donna, and especially when you’re doing a dark episode actually doing emotional stuff with her for once, it’s dragging out a joke that was from her first episode when we didn’t know anything else about her. Defining her by her Dougs

-

Oh yeah her niece is called Wendy - I think that name was made up for Peter Pan? Or else boosted its popularity through the stratosphere to the point that you can make up a fake fact that the name was invented in Peter Pan. Either way, Wendy Darling associations - growing up, but doing the gap year before college is essentially putting off becoming an adult aka having a Peter Pan year…

-

If Mr FBI is the serial killer, calling himself “the Butterfly” is the most inconspicuous way to go about it, than “yeah I named him myself he’s The Badass Slaughter Man” :P

It makes sense, as well, the way he migrates for the winter and back.

-

The pause before describing what happens to the victims and Donna saying “go on”, not wanting to be talked down to or having her feelings saved just because she’s personally invested/female and prone to hysterics/both

-

He’s been chasing him for TWELVE YEARS without catching him

-

Aka this is the easiest thing ever: just get paid to suck at doing your job to find yourself :P

-

If he turns out not to be the killer this was at least a hilarious diversion imagining this

-

Oooh they’ve re-used the yellow panels for the motel screen which have a serious pedigree of being the yellow panels in the motel - but almost always in crosses or inverted crosses in the empty spaces between them. The new pattern doesn’t really have any negative space image I can see.

-

Dean knows trucker lingo.

I assume this is something you pick up if you literally grow up routinely visiting truck stops and being exposed to truckers as the other wandering workers you’d find on the road most often as a hunter.

There’s plenty of headcanons out there about Dean and truckers and picking things up as well.

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He calls Wendy “Alice in Wonderland” which might be trucker lingo but also overlaps with the whole Wendy Darling then when talking about Victorian kids literature

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Sam says it’s stupid to use the trucker radio and then starts trying to argue down the case because he wants to go home and not-sleep some more. (ARGH it being a couple of weeks means Sam has spent a couple of weeks not sleeping)

He has a point about being fugitives and wanting to stay off the radar, but I kinda think he’s just finding reasons and yelling about them because he’s irritable (depressed, angry, no sleep) and wants to stop even though he couldn’t say no to Donna to start with, now they’re here it’s time to start looking for exit ramps.

Dean says “Dad used it all the time” re: the radio so we’re also invoking his ghost with some point to make on top of everything else :P

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“So what do you want to do? Call up Donna and say 'sorry about your niece, these things happen! Later!’ and head back to the bunker to mope some more?”

OH NO I mean of course Dean has noticed but holy crap he’s actually calling it out immediately.

(Reminds me of season 1 when they had so little else going on they were constantly side-eyeing each other’s nightmares and grumpiness levels and commenting on it - Dean especially while trying to work out what was wrong with Sam before he came out with the visions thing.)

Anyways we have it established in the same episode that Dean calls it out that Sam is moping around the Bunker, which honestly should not impress me as much as it does, except that they have had a very passive-aggressive last… 11 years :P

Dean thinks it’s weird that Sam got up at 10 because he’s Mr Rise and Freakin’ Shine, and tbh there were people last year bitching about Davy’s characterisation of these guys, but he has a very very direct way of exposing them and picking which bits to show up to catch them at their worst angles and I LOVE IT from a meta perspective, but perhaps it comes off weird to people who aren’t primed to think of the characters in certain ways. Especially that they may act out of their normal patterns. In 12x15 Dean started the episode disgustingly dirty and not caring about the car or their home environment, which is obviously out of character. Sam “sleeping in” is out of character but this time we see it unfold and at least immediately have a clue that it’s because something is wrong and have it called out far more obviously than in 12x15 where it was left for us to interpret, and some people wildly missed the mark by assuming it was just bad characterisation, instead of identifying past characterisation and playing with it as an exposure of something new

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Also… Dean made pancakes because he knew Sam was upset. My heart.

I mean Sam didn’t go for them, but again, 13x05, Sam trying to make Dean feel better, 13x11, Dean trying to make Sam feel better.

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Uhoh. I am scared to see what Dean lists… “I know you’re in a dark place. We lost Jack, Mom is… I think about 'em too. All the time.”

He doesn’t know Caaaas is lost tooooooo

my heart.

-

ALSO it’s dramatic irony again, as it was at the beginning of the season - Dean not knowing about Cas’s current state, in which we are wildly more equipped to tell him how he should be feeling…

I mean look at bisexualdemondean’s inbox over Christmas with all the jokey needling from people reminding him to check on Cas or coughing into their sleeves about seeing what Asmodeus is up to, and obviously demon!Dean casually being like pfft whatever and paying it no heed because the very in character RP is savvy to this plot that Dean has no clue and seems to think he has no reason to worry, even if he hasn’t seen Cas in a while. The show is making the same reaction as the anons who want him to look and the show Dean is obviously completely in the dark, minus the wink wink fourth wall break from the blogger behind the demon!Dean blog that they know full well what the anons are implying because they’ve seen the show…

why am I using this as an example? Because the show’s been incredible with the dramatic irony this season and as a way of creating an emotive response from us it can not be overlooked as an element of the season, but also has a knife edge from causing a BUNCH of wank from people who don’t get it that this is something Dean doesn’t know, that the pain of watching him not knowing all this stuff is basically permanently setting up SOMETHING at his expense this season and constantly using what he doesn’t know about what’s happening to Cas as the lever to boot.

And idk I find it totally fascinating, and awesome, and really clever, but when the show is super clever the fandom as a mass entity seems to struggle, for whatever reasons.

Non-judgementally, it’s like that MIB meme about panicky mobs of people aka fandoms, just as a mass entity. If you’re reading this I assume you’ve been reading the other posts I made per episode where I’ve talked about this literally every time it comes up so as individuals you’re probably not part of this :P

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Oh heck I should not have pressed play. “You can’t let it eat you up. Look when I was broken  up you were there for me. Well I’m here for you now.”

I love SalmonDean in the exact right quantities and this is the sort of thing that makes my stomach hurt with affection for them

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Dean gives Sam the same message of putting your head down and focussing on the work.

Repress repress repress!!!!!!!

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I think the radio is going to put an end to this - yeah

lol Dean is midnight rider

sounds like a woman on the other end? the static makes it hard to tell but the dudes all laugh off Dean’s request like it’s a hook up request for Wendy or just don’t care, then this woman radios in with info

score one vs toxic masculinity

“it’s a date”

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Dean says he’ll go check it out and tells Sam to hang back, I think to enforce his obligation to Donna while also giving him a chance to rest until needed, which is a nice arrangement.

Sam does the “Look obviously I’m here for Donna” and doesn’t have a “but” - though it’s left hanging that he’s struggling. Whatever else is going on, he is saying he doesn’t intend to bail, despite his earlier attempt to argue to go home

-

aaaaand back to the serial killer basement.

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More masks, and Wendy with her eyes covered too

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Wendy screaming and getting screamed back at, and mocked silently with the serial killer miming tears at her - not using  his voice, definitely falling into this persona of the monster with a disregard for her feelings… the “Boo hoo” attitude again takes me back to toxic masculinity as the bad guy

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And he tells her to smile (again if it’s the UFO creep from the Truck Stop although honestly he looked too small to be this guy) - if it’s not him it’s once again just men being creeps.

-

“Sorry I’m late,” Sam says, showing up after reluctantly dragging himself into work

my heart is breaking for this guy

Donna has been handed credit card history for Wendy so they’ll probably be at the creepy truck stop soon - if that’s not where Dean arranged to go already (I didn’t catch where they arranged to meet)

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Huh, Mr FBI called in Bible Guy who I assume had the Jesus Saves van, of all the potential suspects in that truck stop.

He’s suuuuper creepy but I assume at this point, probably not the bad guy, if he’s already here 15 minutes in.

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Although he did have Wendy’s bloody shirt so who knows… Doesn’t look good.

He’s called Pastor Diamond something or other which goes with how there’s a diamond motel neeext episode… or 13x13. Yeah. Anyways, theeemes

He’s already called out for having a history of lewd behaviour, then we add being creepy enough to keep a bloody shirt even if he isn’t the killer.

(I assume the killer wouldn’t be dumb enough to be caught with it)

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OMG Dean’s dressed as a trucker.

Which is to say, his normal plaid with a puffy vest over it.

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And yaaaay it is mowhawk lady from the diner aka one of the main characters from TAZ Amnesty I mean what no she isn’t a magician with a bunny. I’m so confused :P

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Oh no, she didn’t stop to pick Wendy up, and she made excuses to herself for why she couldn’t stop and help out another woman in distress, and now feels the Guilt. Everyone feels very bad about what happened to Wendy but it’s not helping her >.>

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Donna has to stop to gather herself when they pull out Wendy’s picture and start talking about how great she is.

Pfft and then Diamond whatever fuckhead is super racist about a guy with a Mexican-sounding name. Well he may not be the serial killer to be brought in so early but this is very much a story of how all the humans can be monsters if they try hard enough.

(I love the “Humans are the real monsters” stories and this one is great because who can you trust in that scenario, and it focuses on all sorts of things, like the trucker’s responsibility to help and being a bad Samaritan etc is a lesser evil and she’s definitely one of the nicer-seeming people, because she said Manny’s gives her the creeps as well so she’s on our side about it, but at the same time she’s still mixed in with the social responsibility for allowing evil to happen… this probably isn’t social commentary about current America at allllll)

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Dean enlists Doug’s help which is… great… and Doug shows up trying to be all shady in a hooded coat. Donna’s adapting to the grittiness well… Doug sticks out like a sore thumb

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I like that Dean’s already staking out Manny’s anyways.

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Ewwww Doug just saying “I love Donna” blech

He’s asking if Donna will be okay after never seeing her sad before but almost the first proper interaction Dean had with Donna seeing her as more than local police but as a person was seeing her deep dark pit of sadness about how Doug1 treated her, and told her she deserves better. He KNOWS Donna has a lot of sadness and self-worth issues she doesn’t let on, and if Doug doesn’t know about them after a year, he’s not someone Donna opens up to. She opened up to Jody immediately, in contrast :P

“Not sure what you mean.”

Doug lists some really superficial things they talk about as talking about “everything”

“I think she’s hiding something from me”

Dean is like… hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

He tells Doug he’s going to be there for Donna and to trust her.

Maybe I just really hate Doug more and more but Dean’s starting to remind me of the Lester conversation in 10x02 but just in bafflement about how Doug could possibly ~get~ Donna.

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Meanwhile Donna looks like she’s about to school Pastor Dickhead

He’s sitting there with the lighting giving him a halo while playing butter won’t melt in his mouth

And she’s playing friendly cute Donna facade while telling him he’s gonna be had for dinner for 2 days in the cells while getting him to talk

She’s awesome.

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Well that’s super suspicious that the cashier closed early and chased after Wendy… We’re halfway through so allowing for monster nonsense to get added in…

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At this point because it took so long to get to a download, my mum insisted we watch the episode together while we ate so I now know everything that happened. D:

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Ugh creepy pastor. ugh. the least he deserves is being reduced to crying by Donna while interrogating him.

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Mr Totally Not The Bad Guy being like “But the shiiiirt” and Sam and Donna are too smart to think it makes sense for a moment. Sam says almost exactly what I would have done - hurr blurr I evaded capture for 12 years but here I am with a bloody shirt in my van

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I mean the pastor is probably someone they were sizing up as potential eating and just hadn’t got around to him yet, so he also worked as a fall guy

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Anyway blatant “but if it isn’t him who is it” cut to the cashier

The plot makes mores sense with hindsight that he cracks and shows Dean the video because they’d recognised the Winchesters’ car and so he wasn’t just playing dumb that he happened to know the website but his albi was being over here while the live cutting up was going on but that he confidently had the reassurance they didn’t know he was a vampire so he could go along with whatever while leading them into a trap, and thinking that his day ended with packing up bits of Winchesters to go.

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The “how they do it in the FBI” pathetic slap and then the Look that Donna gives Dean and the shifty look he gives back before turning to Doug and giving him another “but yeah it is” nod to back it up is an amazing silent exchange

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Whoops Doug finds out about monsters. Dean has another “awkward” look caught between them

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At this point Wendy being auctioned is really just bait to make them come

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I will forgive Sam for not being more suspicious of Mr FBI on account of him having a very bad day but the point where he shows up and helps them investigate and Sam, now knowing it’s monsters, doesn’t fob him off harder but just says “alright follow me” is where I call impaired judgement

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The caged halo lights are back and the creepy mask guy doesn’t get to stand under one but one is directly behind Wendy in the video clip of her screaming

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The trick with the radio is good because it works on us too knowing the torture is currently going on with that music playing.

And then we go to Doug being roughed up and turned because it’s time to do all the reveals now we have the fake out, so Sam gets knocked out and Doug left as a distraction and the cashier to hold them up.

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Oops Doug is a vampire. Doug growling is weird

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Pfft and he just immediately attacks Donna. Dean is very quick thinking to immediately grab dead man’s blood as soon as things start going.

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“Well thanks for making it easy for me.”

The vampire comes back to gloat and tell Dean that Sam’s been got.

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I love that Donna has no patience and just shoots the guy’s knee out because we need to sort things out and Dean’s showy machete waving ways aren’t her style :P

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“No no no get further back. He’s a big boy, we need a wiiiide lens” I know it’s terrible but I laughed SO HARD

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“Hell soon as I saw that fancy car I knew who you were”

… we do always say is it a good idea that they keep driving it around? no. but will they stop? Never. :P

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“The Butterfly” giving Sam a rough estimate of how many monsters there are - 100s of thousands - says the ones Sam and Dean see are too mean or stupid to “pass” which does lend itself to a double-edged fear of every day people being monsters… I think the implication with a corrupt FBI guy and the monsters we see all being white peeps is not a racist implication but more commentary on society being awful and so on, and I think using the racist preacher as the absolute scum of humanity is a good way to avoid too much weird implications about monsters - the BMoL had that creepy Brexit parallel which sort of cast monsters as immigrants which of course, considering they might well eat people, wasn’t the neatest message.

I think this is a bit more tuned to 2018 anyway :P My concerns about the social commentary from earlier have mostly evaporated.

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He thinks he’s saving good honest American lives by feeding only people who won’t be missed to the monsters - and he mentioned that the Mexican guy had a family which means he WOULD be missed - he’s just racist too.

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He’s good at the whole auction voice thing though.

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They really toned down the vampire cure thing because Dean barfed his guts up with it and now he’s letting Donna give Doug the cure in the car as they drive.

In the *car*

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“Let’s begin the auction for Sam Winchester’s HEART”

lemme tell you, even coming in at like 500k that’s still not as much as it’s worth. That is a priceless artefact there.

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I absolutely adore the “you had no idea your aunt could do that” fight sequence :D

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Like, she knows Donna’s a cop, but having her just bust in and kill the guy…

What an aunt.

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“There are many pieces to Sam Winchester but only one heart”

Honestly, devoid of context, I wanna see that on like 8 different artsy Sam edits.

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Fake out Sam getting shot. “Since Dean’s out there, quick and dirty.”

Not quick enough.

Sam having a “huh, I’m not dead,” moment. After we see the close up gunshot and that’s why Sam and “The Butterfly” were both down to their white shirts, because there’s just a mo where we aren’t sure which one of them we’re seeing even though it was aimed at Sam’s head so it’s clear just from seeing a shot to the heart that it wasn’t Sam.

Also he wouldn’t just randomly die, I say in a season where Dean randomly died already :P

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Dean does those quips just for Sammy’s benefit

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I think Donna and Doug maaay not have been dating but she kinda realised she might like him now they’ve had a sort of adventure together…

“I was a vampire!”  
“For a couple of hours”

Ah well, bye bye Doug, thanks for breaking Donna’s heart, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

-

This was a bit drawn out but I think it was important for Donna even if Doug is really annoying so I don’t like watching him struggle on screen.

I think Donna really hoped she’d found someone in the life

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Sam just sees it as completely inevitable and good for Donna that she doesn’t have someone she cares about in the firing line.

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Ow.

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Ow ow ow ow.

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Oh Donna as well… :(

I’m just in so much pain for Sam and Donna. Dean needs to hug 'em both.

He just gives Donna the pat on the shoulder while she cries.

Buuut now she’s Doug-free for Wayward Sisters, hurrah!

She and Jody can bond and discover something in each other they didn’t even know they were missing :3

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That Jody’s name isn’t “Doug” for starters.

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Dean’s still harping on what Sam said to Donna, both telling her to get used to having no one close to you and just in general, yikes it’s never good to hear someone you care about talking that way about caring about people and he should know he’s BEEN there.

-

This is like the dark opposite of 11x04’s optimistic Sam and “someone in the life” stuff.

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Sam angrily stands his ground because he’s a grumpy goose today “Was I wrong?”

it seems like Kaia set off his latest mood but also in losing Jack in the process of looking for Mary, who, also, is still gone and not seen for weeks before that, presumed dead… I would guess the fact that he was miserable in The Bad Place was the start of this, before Kaia died, and losing her really just symbolised how shitty everything is, the cherry on top of losing all the people they care about over and over.

After Dean spent the first part of the season his terrible way, now Sam’s got his overdue depression and breakdown (tiiitle drop) that has been lurking below the surface…

… if we’re lucky, as Sam fans, this might not just be a one-episode thing but actually, like, something that’s going to happen in an ongoing way for Sam??

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Sam denies he’s in a dark place because everything he’s saying is true, but Sam normally does repress and get optimistic about finding ways to research their way out of whatever hole they get themselves into this time.

Which ain’t healthy but is how Sam manages to skim over the top of being in a dark place most times, meaning this is really hitting him hard now.

-

He also mentions Cas in his list of having mom and cas back and helping jack, accidentally playing into the dramatic irony in another way, of not knowing Cas is currently in trouble now as well but still listing him among the ones they’ve lost and that he’s lost hope over…

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“This ends one way for us, Dean.”

And with that, the ginormous, grimy, rusty cog behind the entire mechanism, finally clunks around a slot, turning it from Dean as the dying bloody mindset Winchester to Sam, for the first time in a long time, and in a very curious way that Dean, who states it all the time, is now forced to evaluate and to think, do I really agree with it? I say it all the time but WOAH THAT IS HORRIFYING TO HEAR COMING OUT OF SAMMY’S MOUTH WHAT THE HELL WHO BELIVES THAT?

I’M CARVING THAT FUCKER A SLICE OF THE APPLE PIE LIFE AND HE’S GONNA SHUT UP AND EAT HIS DAMN LIZARD. PIE. I MEANT PIE.

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Anyway then we end of that awful shot of Sam from the outside of the impala looking in on him which just makes us feel helpless about not being able to hug him, in my scientific opinion of what that shot is implying.


	12. 13x12

too excited to proofread, have a panicked train of thought

expectations: I’m not sure, but definitely not what it seems everyone else was panicking about…

Honestly the premise seems so weirdly Buckleming (Asmodeus, bringing back Rowena, a love spell and witches) that I feel like I’m about to peer into a void where Yockey is Buckleming, just like 11x18 was Buckleming Is Dabb. Not that Yockey hasn’t firmly stamped that he likes playing with witches onto his brand as well, but it’s pretty much just him and BL which makes for odd thematic bedfellows…

So, yeah, I don’t actually have a clue what to anticipate here because the promo and stuff really does just make it look, including the scenes we’ve seen in sneak peeks, like I’m about to watch a Buckleming episode, and only the constant reassurance of “Yockey wrote this” is convincing me to watch it all level of brain engaged :P

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things I am expecting: a vague sense of discontinuity caused by the Stakes on a Train episode getting canned for budget reasons, filed under “this is because of Wayward Sisters so I’m forgiving basically the entire show between 13x07>12 some serious nonsense” - up to and including Cas’s whereabouts because this is where we get back to that story…

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things I am loosely wondering about but deeply unconvinced of: Yockey briefly making me care about wtf is up with Lucifer, at least as an antagonist, before Buckleming take him back into their loving embrace, a la 12x15 and Perez making me think there was a point to it all >.>

-

Roweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena

-

I swear they put the freakin recap of Dean watching Scooby Doo for Reasons because there were a million better 1 second clips to convey he’s cursed than him cheerfully watching Scoob at work.

-

CAS

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also like 10 minutes of 13x07 recap yawn

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That’s the most specific unspecific location they’ve given :P

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Hunting and Trails magazine, with “the most lethal handguns ever made” on the front and a “Maybe smoking looks cool but it kills” fake ad on the back… Starting another episode watching feet walking, this time combat boots and camo pants, but a sort of greasy biker top half of the guy, and then this guy who’s into the hunting magazine (for normal real world hunters) so there’s a sort of type here, whether they’re human or not… Commentary on hunters if human, I guess

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I have no clue what this guy said

-

Anyway here’s the witch sisters… MORE witch twins. But rather different from Max and Alicia, especially as she turned out not to be a witch… are these two both magical?

Seems like they have an established trick that one slips the hexbag and the other does the spell so it could just be she has the magic and the other helps her out

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Dear lord that’s corny romance music. I guess for the blatantness of what’s going on… She’s hyper saturated and colourful, then we drop back to normal vision and we see her in normal colours and the music disappears, bringing us back to the reality of the situation from the outside, as he melts towards her.

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Jamie is the one who does the spell, Jenny is the one who slips the hexbag

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You do not need to be a good actor to get what you want :P

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I like Jamie’s specification it has to be “good” vodka

-

LOL sparkly noise when she kisses him.

-

Uhoh, 3 Sheeps Beer is on sale here… I’m sure Mittens has written plenty about that already… And the obligatory El Sol

-

Dale is so happy he got the goods!

(Poor bloke >.>)

Oh boy that hammer is not promising.

Is this the same parking lot as 13x05 but turned into a liquor store instead of the front of a motel? It seems a bit soon to re-use the set but those yellow pillars are really familiar.

This is the spot Dean turned down going to “the clam diver” and, to be clear, in another Yockey episode.

-

“What’s with the hammer?” Oh no

Oh poor Dale. He seemed like a nice bloke.

-

Jamie’s shoes are undone and idk if that’s fashion or meta

-

Anyway they have a mom who taught them some pretty scary rules about being a witch out in the wide world.

“Always look your best, never get attached to a man, and always make the death look non-magical, so you don’t attract hunters.”

2/3 of those are Rowena, but the last one? NAH LET’S JUST MELT SOME GUY

-

Poor poor Dale.

-

“Various and Sundry Villains”

I just wanna talk about that title for a mo - it really feels to me like commentary on somehow ending up with a Buckleming level assignment, realising you’re juggling, at *least* these witches, Rowena, Lucifer, and Asmodeus, and having a quiet weep before setting to the task of wrangling two storylines with all different levels of antagonist, be they cartoonish like the KFC guy, almost completely friendly and chill by now like Rowena, or whatever is up with Lucifer being bundled in with Cas on this not particularly redeeming whatever they’re doing to him to make him a bit less of a threat. And the MotW level witches, of course.

Anyway you end up with wonky episodes when you weave in secondary plots to them and don’t have a knack for it, and Buckleming handle waaay too many of these episodes where it feels like all the plot and themes have been put together in a blender for the characters to deal with and 18 things are going on at once as they throw the plot forwards…

It seems like a commentary on the lack of a uniting theme, more than anything, except for, this episode is weirdly cluttered because I’m writing these weirdly cluttered plot arcs required to power the season along, so the only thing with the set up we’ve got, to cover everyone in one title, is just to point out how much is going on? Like, even if the characterising MotW stuff with the witches that gives it all its flavour is where the title ends up coming from in a stronger way that makes sense to apply it mainly to them, it has to cover the Asmodeus nonsense too at least as a nod…

filed under: things I’ve been thinking about since I heard the title, in an unformed way, but seeing it on screen and confronting watching the episode, I feel like I should mention. Just because I have weird reservations about this episode without knowing where the Yockey magic may come from, and knowing I am really quite bored of Lucifer and Asmodeus and please get Cas away from them soon >.>

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Dean struggles to pronounce a french title - I wonder how many Dean fans are up in arms about that… bit divided… He seems unlikely to have ever picked up french, and having learned basic french in school and not being a complete hermit I at least know pronunciation and what I would consider the common vocabulary you’d know just from it being part of the cultural world we live in, but then I can see the English Channel from my window (*waves at France*) so I’m not exactly primed to say what’s common knowledge for average Americans. But I think being able to recognise when something is in a foreign language and having basic identifying markers for which one is something Dean should know, because, like… I know identifying markers of a bunch of languages I have almost no experience in whatsoever, like being able to tell Korean, Chinese and Japanese apart and knowing they don’t look anything alike, or being able to tell Greek from Russian, again, all languages I have zilch learning in. Noticing something is in French or Spanish or Italian another Romance or Germanic language which use our alphabet should be plain sailing, and “Et” is one of those dead giveaways you’re dealing with French even if you don’t know any of the other words, so, like, idk, we all know how to do fake versions of these accents to pronounce mysterious words we don’t actually know, right? :P

As a monolingual but not completely ignorant English speaker but NOT an American I’m just like… what level of basic awareness of other languages is even normal? It’s a cultural mixing pot country and that includes all the different white cultures that went over there with all their different european language roots… If nothing else multiculturalism is the language of food and Dean seems like he knows a fair amount about that :P

All this to say, I wonder if Dean is playing at least a little dumb because he knows Sam is down in the dumps, and is allowing him to be the clearly more intellectual brother - a role Dean has ALWAYS been happy to cede to him, even when he does actually turn out to know his own share of lore and basic history etc when it’s actually important rather than when it makes him look like a nerd to admit it. Saving a book for last with a foreign title, thinking, Ah, Sammy will know how to pronounce that, the big nerd, and then deliberately mangling it to allow Sam the superiority of knowing and explaining it.

-

Dean is also basically on cheer up duty, getting Sam stuff to research, books with potential info to follow, and doing things in a Dean way to cheer up Sam in the way he thinks will work for Sam. Maybe there will be stuff about the apocalpyse world… when Sam is reluctant to agree, still mournful and struggling to find optimism, Dean complains, “DUDE.” his tone reprimanding Sam for not taking any of this cheer up bait of the nerdy stuff he loves.

Sam exlpains the logistics of being unable to find Jack - they seem to be working on the assumption he won’t be able to find his own way back, without another Kaia to guide him. And maybe he won’t, and they will have to rescue someone this year at long last… Maybe when we see Jack’s side of the story, some other way will occur to them for him to get home with Mary, because long-term research projects almost NEVER actually yield answers for Sam and Dean :P

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“You read, do your… Sam thing” aka he is clearly identifying research enthusiasm with Sam’s normal behaviour, and EXACTLY like Sam was giving Dean all the random performing Dean things to do, Dean is giving Sam generic Sam things to do to cheer him up, but clearly labelling it for us that this is what he is doing, and we know this is not really how to fix Sam and that’s obvious in the emotional balance of this scene.

You know, basic validation for the performing Dean discussion from a few weeks ago.

-

Also Dean putting words in Sam’s mouth, projecting the idea that they get their heads down and do the work is something Sam said - I honestly think they say these things back and forth so much that at some point they DID say it, but I’m pretty sure last episode Sam did say something about not being able to just push through like that - if I’m not totally wrong, though, was that what their discussion was in 13x05 where Sam was telling it to Dean while trying to haul Dean out of the dumps? I don’t even know, it’s such generic dialogue :P

-

And Dean then says he’s going on a beer run - which is now a thing associated with Cas since 11x23 - and then suddenly doubles back, to say, we should fill Cas in on all this, his voice raising on the end with a slight challenge, an unspoken disagreement or suggestion that Dean doesn’t like that they’re not communicating with Cas properly or that he’s not in charge of this, like it’s Sam’s problem, like that somehow the fact that he has to bring it up like this means they’re NOT filling Cas in and it’s bugging him and this is some ongoing issue. Aka Sam is running point on talking to Cas, and the very fact Dean ISN’T the one talking to him, that he’s checking with Sam what he thinks of the main plot stuff they should discuss with Cas, shows the little rifts and tension that having only KFC to talk to for the last few weeks has started to cause.

Sam explains that Cas has been checking in every day, and Dean explains back to him, in a confrontational tone, about how Cas has just been asking questions but giving them no leads, which even if he never says it outright, is implying this is strange, by even bringing up Cas’s behaviour and explaining that he’s doing something, because you don’t bring up how someone is behaving if it doesn’t strike you as weird, you know?

And over this, we see our first glimpse of Cas since before Christmas (oh my heart) which is hammering home the dramatic irony once again that we know he’s been locked up and Sam and Dean still don’t, the exact same but reverse position of when we were well aware he was better than dead or wandering around the Empty getting his chance to come back, and Sam and Dean were mournfully mourning him back at the start of the season.

-

“I’m sure he’s doing the best he can”

HE IS. ALWAYS.

I like how Cas is sitting. That old well of patience, and aloofness, and full of dignity despite the situation. Sitting in the little pool of light, he looks somehow more angelic than he has in a long while, if only in contrast to his surroundings.

A demon wanders past, and Cas doesn’t even bother to look at him.

Not from defeat. Just indifference to the guy.

-

Lucifer looks CONSIDERABLY more stressed and worse at confinement (for some reason) and it prompts the demon to stop and bother him, because Lucifer is bad at being chill. Which is ironic, if he still slightly lowers the temperature everywhere he goes.

-

this like, 10 seconds of Lucifer screentime has made me convinced Yockey is as bored of him as we are :P Dipper gets in the insult about little sticks, then Lucifer loses his chill and immediately gets up and grabs the bars, which he MUST know by now are magically warded, and gets magic-electrocuted by it because he can’t keep his chill, take an insult, or even win in a war of words with a random mook called Dipper (who I am 100% rooting for now :P)

Cas, our audience surrogate here, casts a weary eye over at the wall, at the sound of this disturbance, because if he’s been here a couple of weeks, those disturbances must have been plentiful, as Lucifer craves attention and loathes being locked up. Contrasted to Cas, it’s clear he’s emotionally weak and essentially, that being locked up by the KFC demon isn’t a competition but if it was, Cas is winning :P

I mean, honestly, just getting to the point where he’s lost his cool enough to get himself electrocuted by the bars, I’m now doubling down completely on my headcanon that Michael actually had the better of him in the cage, and for whatever reason Chuck went along with Lucifer’s version of events (mostly utter disinterest in actually fighting the fight and being convinced Amara was gonna win etc) we absolutely can not let Lucifer dictate the story to us about what went on in the cage. 13x02 showed Michael could best Lucifer, 12x12 warned us that Michael had the upper hand with that spear, and had the same painting from 4x22 reminding us that Michael had pasted Lucifer before and put him in the cage in the first place for most of eternity… Why on earth would Lucifer suddenly have the upper hand when he’s persistently shown as weaker than his brother, you know? :P

-

“Smooth. We gave the warding a little kick, just for you.”

Yeah, okay, maybe this is new, but that just means Dipper won even better, by goading Lucifer into grabbing the bars he knew were warded, because he wanted to see what would happen, and of course Cas is not gonna do it… :P

Lucifer yells some playground level insults… I mean, preschool playground insults… and pokes the bars again just to see it spark.

-

Cas finally snarks back at him, once they’re alone and Cas measures his words so that he doesn’t give an inch. Speaking slowly and confidently = top bitch here. “You don’t have that power, and they know it.”

-

Lucifer suggests nomming a bit of Cas’s grace would give him the power to bust them out, and honestly, considering the way it KILLS ANGELS to steal grace I’d almost say sure, lend him a lil tiny bit just to watch it poison him from the inside out… except while Cas loathed being a grace vampire, I’m sure Lucifer would casually just add grace to his morning breakfast routine >.>

-

“Well that’s a nice, horrifying, plan,” Cas says, pointing out that it’s cannibalism, but Lucifer reminds him that he’s done it before, to Cas’s annoyance.

-

“There is no "I” in Team, Castiel.“ That’s what makes Cas laugh from that promo clip - the idea of being on a team with Lucifer? The thought that Lucifer would add a giant "I” to “team” somehow but he’s saying this to Cas to try and persuade him that it benefits him to help Lucifer and that it’s mutually beneficial though it would have no guarantee that Lucifer would actually help Cas. And of course, Cas is in a much better Team. Team Free Will 2.0, as Dean has recently labelled it. Which, you know, includes Lucifer’s son that he has 0 custody rights to, and has chosen Cas as his father instead.

And Cas still finds the idea of Lucifer being added to that mess as utterly laughable :P

-

“Asmodeus was my weakest creation” Yeah we’ve all noticed he sucks

“Excuses aside, you’re saying you’re too weak to overcome your weakest creation.” I love Cas 1000%

mittensmorgul  
BLESS

elizabethrobertajones  
man, we’re all dunking on Lucifer here

mittensmorgul  
CRITICAL HIT

elizabethrobertajones  
you, me, Cas, Dipper, Yockey  
Team You Suck Lucifer

-

Lucifer pulls out the pre-pre school insult book. “Shut up.”

Cas smirks again, and we go back to Dean.

-

Honestly I spent Christmas feeling sorry for Cas being stuck in the cell next to Lucifer… I’m never gonna feel sorry for Lucifer but I am starting to feel like he’s the one stuck next to Cas

-

Dean turns a corner and abruptly and dramatically falls in love.

-

Those horns don’t get less silly…

-

Whooops true love’s kiss huh? We’re just… going with that now huh

-

Awww his sleeping beauty woke up and knows his name. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard.

Awwwww.

-

This is how all heterosexual romance on TV looks.

Kinda forced, cheesy, how the fuck did it just like… happen… all of a sudden… why is the saturation turned up…

-

Okay no Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago were pretty rad

-

Dean strolls into the bunker whistling. Who is this man.

The lamp from the table lights up his face with the same over-saturated glow as was fake-added to Dale’s vision of Jamie.

-

I feel like it’s important to note that the moment that was interrupted was Sam saying to Dean it’s about time to call Cas, but Dean’s… distracted.

-

Awww he’s twitterpated.

-

“She’s sweet and she’s beautiful, and she’s just kinda sorta perfect!” He’s kind of adorable himself here…

For once, the fact he’s wearing red plaid probably IS because it represents passion and love, but only because this is all so fucked up.

-

“Anyway I’m thinking of asking her to move in with me here!” Oh Dean. Hon. No. Dean. No. Hon. Sweetie. No.

… I mean not like there is an entire seasons long arc about Cas wavering about belonging in the Bunker and Dean kicking him out that one time and…

-

Just, like, casually helping himself to the Black Grimoire as he talks about it.

-

Red flags yet, Sammy?

-

“Uh, Dean, what are you doing with the Black Grimoire?”

“It’s a gift. For Jamie.”

“Jamie?”

“My soulmate.” *WINK*

Jesus chrriiiisst Yockey & Amanda Tapping, who I am henceforth banning from working together for my own sanity

“And she actually asked for that book by name?”

“YEAH. Isn’t it like cosmic fate that we actually have it!??!?!?!??”

Dean. Honey. DEAN.

Anyway I am just like… beside myself from laughter, yes, but also remembering in 13x05 aka hi Yockey, Billie pointing out with weighty and huge dialogue about how the cosmos is full of poetic stuff. Hmmmmmm. Yes clearly this means Dean n Jamie are soulmates, that’s definitely what that was all about :P

-

Sam swallows back horror, and reminds Dean of Becky, because, well… We’ve all been there, Dean.

Dean’s “Nuh” and headshake with bunny in headlights look is puuuure denial of listening to what Sam is saying and being brought back to the rationality of popping out for beer and coming back with a soulmate.

-

“The less attractive siblings, they fall in love, that’s kinda cute, right?”

I am actually disappointed that Dean’s already on the record for loving chick flicks because 2 years ago this would have been prime evidence for shouting him down about this and saying he clearly has watched far too many.

-

“it’s gorgeeeeous outside.”

C'mon Sam, just play into this, say you want to meet the sist -

never mind Dean clocked him

-

“Listen, when I get back from my date, I’ll help you ice that, okay, thanks, good talk, pal!” *Dean disappearing from shot*

Honestly there’s the bizarrest shades of 10x22 with Dean leaving a floored family member behind in the library while making his exit.

Every single other level of it however is fucky in some other way :P

-

What an incredible scene.

-

Awwww Dean brought the book :D What a romantic hero

Good boys get a kiss.

*Jamie raises the mallet*

*Sam comes screeching around the corner in the car they wanted to steal*

-

“Don’t leave!” he whimpers while grappling Sam in their second worst fight after the Trickster fight in 2x15.

“We should leave in case the one with the hair wins”

… yeah

-

Sam getting murdered while trying to destroy a hexbag while Dean is sadly saying, “I’m sorry Sam, I just love her so much!”

Honestly it’s like the weirdest mirror to all of Sam’s anxiety about what Dean getting a love interest would mean for their dynamic. That they’d snatch Dean away from him, make Dean care about them so much more than Sam that he’d become indifferent to Sam’s life or death…

-

YES what an entrace

“Hello boys!”

I am 100% behind her just taking over this role Crowley once had

Also kinda assuming for now she’s the one who sent the girls to steal the book but kinda knew they’d fuck it up or she had to at least be close when the Winchesters are involved, and now the girls ran off with the book, time to play allies and work together to get it back but take it for herself after :P

-

Ooh Lucifer wasn’t just making weird hand gestures out of irritation in the opening scene with them, we’re getting a close up on him messing around with a stick, I guess trying to test out his powers and see how they’re doing.

-

Cas is still sitting exactly where he has probably been sitting since before Christmas

Dipper tries taunting Cas with vague threats, and Cas just kinda stares over his shoulder like do I fucking care and who fucking asked

-

Lucifer continues to be agitated about Michael coming to kill them all, while Cas acts doubtful about it - same as not caring that Asmodeus might come back and have “Big plans” for him, because honestly what the fuck is all this, the vague threat of Michael coming to bother them at least while Lucifer is the one complaining about it and there’s no other signs it’s happening, just feels kind of not immediate enough to spend time panicking and giving people an opening to harrass him.

He’s very very patient but that has to come with the luxury of assuming you can endure, and adding in a snarky “If” about Michael coming helps sit there and not fuss.

-

Michael is described as deciding he will do something and then just doing it once he sets his mind to it.

Cas takes Lucifer’s assessment of Michael as maybe not a lie because context seems to suggest why would he make up a random character trait at this point, and looks somewhat nervous when he asks how much time they have, at least in the sense that he actually turns his eyes a little to the wall Lucifer is on the other side of, like he’s genuinely listening this time and assessing it, and isn’t narrowing his eyes dismissively.

-

OH NO Don’t bring up Mary to Cas! D: I’m sensitive about the tiny weeny friendship they made on screen… Lucifer brings up how much time they have is based on the ongoing torture of Mary amusing Michael, but what NEITHER of them know is that Jack has found his way to Mary, and whatever is going on in the AU, Jack’s now a part of it and I assume helping Mary. So there’s some dramatic irony for the both of them, still playing into the theme of the season of the viewer emphatically being the only one who can ever know even remotely what’s going on.

Lucifer snarks at Cas that he liked Mary, which is the worst, btw.

I think I should include Michael as one of the various and sundry villains, even if he’s not in this episode directly, just because his presence or non-presence is playing its own threatening role.

ANYWAY OH NO I HIT PLAY AND LUCIFER WAS TALKING ABOUT ALL THE HORRIBLE THINGS MICHAEL DID TO MARY AND CAS IS LIKE “STOP I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE OF YOUR LIES” BECAUSE AAAAAH HE CARES ABOUT MARY SO MUCH AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME WE SEE HIM CRACK AND PROBABLY IS THE FIRST TIME LUCIFER MADE HIM CRACK AND AAAAAAH

-

Lucifer tells Cas “coming from the angel who almost has ME beat in that department” (he’s going to go on to claim he tells truths people don’t like to hear so they call them lies but this is also an admission to lying so go figure) - anyway that leaves it a kind of lingering accusation of why bring up that Cas is a liar and what is he lying ABOUT because there’s either a main plot thing going on that Cas is not telling the truth about - Jack or the Empty being the only things he’s really interacted with - a historical reference to Cas’s lying, which, again, Lucifer has been in his head, knows about the stolen grace for example, and so would know about season 6 and all - or an ongoing accusation that Cas is a liar in the present tense to suggest that Cas is still not being open and honest about stuff which takes us back to an open-ended, well, what? The last lie he told on screen was the phone call where he had to lie to Dean about being with Lucifer and turned his lie into a plea for help, so Dean’s sort of implicated anyways but there’s all the stuff with the Empty, who also got in Cas’s head, and Lucifer is serving a similar narrative purpose here, with the 2 of them trapped together and Lucifer having the run of Cas’s feelings up to season 11, and the Empty talked about who Cas loved…

I’m just saying

-

He also calls Cas “Cassandra” which might be a play on his name but also reminds us of the prophet

-

HELP NOW CAS IS TALKING ABOUT JACK

“let me tell you a few truths about your son.”

“did you just have an angel-stroke?”

pfft

“did you know that he loves movies? fantasy movies, with heroes, who crush villains.”

Ooooh boy the “various and sundry villains” title maybe is for the main arc stuff after all…

PS: I love Cas

Lucifer “pffts” it off but sounds a little panicked as he says “that’s nurture, that’s not nature.” but good nurturing still produces solid character traits. Takes us back to the Buckleming argument in 13x02 about it all with Donnatello - and HONESTLY we’re 15 minutes in and I STILL haven’t shaken the feeling I’m watching an episode using Buckleming’s flashcards but written with Yockey’s actual, like… writing.

(Side note: I don’t know if I’ll be able to find it but there’s that interview with Eugenie where she talks about how they write - they put down all the points they want to cover on flash cards, take half each, and literally go sit in separate rooms, write all their bits, reconvene, like, sellotape them together and call it done, because honestly you can see the sellotape and the lack of editing to remove duplicate exposition >.> I’ve got her comments about their writing practice burned into my brain with the sort of horror of having seen a small disaster on the side of the road going some place)

Anyway Cas talks about how nice Jack is some more and I’m sad

“And he’s thoughtful, he’s… emotional, remarkably intuitive. You know, he resurrected me, just out of instinct. Isn’t that a beautiful gesture?”

Like, I love you bby but can you stop before I cry

-

The camera swaps from outside the bars looking in on Lucifer as Cas side-eyes him through his bars, to in the cell with Lucifer as he paces agitatedly, realising Jack’s never even reached out to him (to be fair they were in the same reality for like, a day so far)…

“Yeah, that’s, uh, beautiful.”

So we’re just dunking on Lucifer all episode, basically, as Cas points out, without even really knowing, how Jack has disowned Lucifer, said he’s nothing to him, and that Cas is his true and chosen family.

-

“Jack would rather kill you, than hug you.”

Cas’s words are still measured and deliberate and stab stab stab this is how he kills people

“Seems relevant. You know, he doesn’t even really look like you. And he reminds me SO MUCH of his mother.”

I didn’t bring a stuffed toy to this episode and I am feeling Regret.

-

Lucifer is Truly Shaken. “Woooow” he whispers to himself, realising that Castiel, dork of the Lord, has actually just STABBED him from another sealed jail cell.

-

Angry enough to throw that stick he’d been making wiggly fingers at earlier, though.

Maybe he just needs Cas to dunk on him some more to make him angry enough to blast out the cage.

-

elizabethrobertajones  
Okay Lucifer just threw that stick  
pls tell me before I hit play, it’s now a plot point he’s going to get Cas to wind him up and say even more awful stuff to him to make him angry enough to burst out of the cell  
I need to know if this episode is literally dependant on Lucifer being a big weenie who can’t take criticism and Cas gets to snark him to freedom  
because this is already a parallel encounter to being trapped with the Empty  
he can annoy his way out of that

mittensmorgul  
You want me to tell you?

elizabethrobertajones  
can he snark his way to freedom with Lucifer?  
….  
yes but only if specifically this is exactly what happens

mittensmorgul  
Cas’s snark is now officially the most powerful force in the cosmos

elizabethrobertajones  
I love this guy  
:’)

mittensmorgul  
:D  
No mojo required. He had the power inside him all along.

elizabethrobertajones  
I love him so much

mittensmorgul  
It was just his snark  
same

elizabethrobertajones  
His snark and his ability to sit completely still and keep his cool  
the literal force of his character

mittensmorgul  
I’m so proud of him

-

I hit play and Lucifer got a little smirk like, well then, that happened.

-

Meanwhile, ROWENA.

“Ask me.”

Her SMIRK I AM IN LOVE

-

I love the chill smirky ones.

-

Dean loves her too. “Moment of weakness, huh?” he says, remembering how they bonded over the whole memory loss thing in the first place, and secretly knowing a lot more about Rowena in a sort of mutually assured destruction of feelings coming out that she saw him being all goopy with no memory :P

-

She CLAIMS she only showed up because she felt it moving, which means she’s been living pretty close-by since Dean literally walked from the Bunker to the parking lot where Rowena found them.

-

Rowena’s magic has been bound this WHOLE TIME while she happens to already be one of the most powerful witches ever already… I mean I can see why they’d bind her if this is what she’s like WHILE BOUND.

-

“Oh you wiiinchesters.” I think they brought her back entirely to purr that line again omg

I have the biggest crush on her :P

-

… not much critical thought going into this for some reason with this scene stealy little witch around

-

“Wheeeeellll lovverrr?”

Dean is not living that down, huh?

-

“Oh. One more thing. Where’s my son?”

Aww. She wanted to be the one to murder him! Don’t tell her he heroically self-sacrificed, that’s like the opposite of what she would want, if she couldn’t get him.

-

LOL the sisters wandering through the hardware store reading the book and complaining their mum never taught them enough to read it all.

I kinda like them even though they’re evil because they have kind of fun personalities and do seem to care about each other and all, they just tend to be murdery and awful while doing it.

“So we wing it. We’re REALLY good at improvising.”

-

Brenda is reading a magazine which says “Cat!” visible on camera in the close up but seems to say “ssCat!” in the long shot. What on earth is the fake magazine department smoking? It’s like they found out we like looking at them and made dozens for our amusement :P

It’s a nice cat on the front. The bulldog from canine ballet reappears but the back cover is black and grim and I will be so sad if no one reads it for me, because I think I have a low def version :P

-

Poor Brenda

they are the rude customers

-

“We need a soul to sacrifice”

*just immediately see some guy*

“good enough”

-

I feel like something just got crossed off a wishlist I didn’t know I had to hear Sam call Crowley “Fergus”

-

But aww Rowena no. Don’t be sad/angry that he died heroically and you’re disappointed in him in death as in life and also sad and kinda like, mourning him and ready to cry. :P

“That doesn’t sound like him!” she’s fuuuurious. And sad. I don’t think she wants to be.

“He changed. A lot. You’d have been proud of him.” Hmmm.

Her nose has gone extremely red as she tries not to cry, and hilariously it reminds me of her Christmas dream where she was rudolph, though I don’t think you can deliberately link that Ruthie’s crying face is pink-nosed to that

“I’d much rather have a living son, even one that hated me, than a dead HERO.”

-

At least Lucifer is - “DON’T BE STUPID. HE’S NEVER GONE.”

Sam carried a LOT of the Crowley convo, maybe because Dean had a confusingly weird relationship with him to the end, while Sam seems to have reconciled a little with what Crowley was, post-death, finding it easy to think of him finally redeeming himself then and there as a hero. Dean only taps back in to cheerfully point out that Lucifer is trapped in another dimension, and like a voice of wisdom, one of the women removed from the narrative in 12x23, finally back in the story, immediately yells Dean down to not be stupid about it, finally breaking the dramatic irony streak with WELL LEARNED SUSPICION

-

Hahahah Rowena shutting them up with “it’s like talking about an abusive relationship! why would you do that!” and pouring herself another drink.

I like this new version of Rowena a LOT.

Let Ruthie eat more scenery

-

HOLY CRAP I’M ONLY 20 MINUTES IN

-

“I just remember being an overly ambitious wee witch” see that is girl power: Rowena giving them credit even though they’re haphazard newbies doing their best with their mom’s teachings and forging their way in the world, because she empathises with their situation, and then her AMAZING rounding on them - “they outfoxed you, didn’t they!” and Sam laughs to himself and Dean looks suitably chastised.

-

“There’s no such thing as fifth base”   
“You pooooorrr sheltered boy.”

Okay 1: yes it was a wee bit out of line to come up to Dean and mock him about being magically roofied and to ask if they got it on and all but 2: I literally had to get up and go pee after I laughed for about 5 minutes, and this episode is almost impossible to finish because I’ve been laughing non-stop

Mittens informs me that 5th base is anal so I would like to send a gift basket to the MacLeods for constantly talking about putting things in Dean’s butt.

What Rowena doesn’t know about Dean and Crowley… and will never know, because I don’t think Dean will ever be BFFs enough with Rowena to tell him…

though

she was in the room in 11x23 when Crowley implied he knew what would fit up Dean’s butt…

-

*wipes away tears of laughter*

I’m sure that scene has been talked about enough already

-

Anyway Sam and Dean refuse to work with her, on Dean’s say-so, after Rowena has downed all their whiskey

She looks utterly unconcerned

-

Ooooh they’re trying to revive their dead mum

“It’s time to make a phonecall” okay the fact there’s someone who they’re dependant on, maybe NOT Rowena if she would just steal the book from them without helping them, who knows, is pretty worrisome.

-

You know, the spell in 12x11 was to move their dead brother’s soul into Sam’s body… Does that mean they’re gonna put their mom in shop guy, or are they doing something else?

-

I don’t think these girls are twins, I’m pretty sure Jamie is older now.

Her absolute conviction they can bring their mom back using the spell in the  book mirrors both Winchesters about each other and probably their determination to find Mary

Someone else has probably written the more complicated meta about this

“I know I’m the big sister and I’m meant to be the strong one or whatever… I just really miss her”

“I like… really believe in us”

Awwww… I mean, they’re really murdery, but they’re really emotional about it.

And they will curse a million people to get their family member back which it TOOOTES not a Winchester parallel

-

LOL at the end “I believe in you too, Jenny, because I love you!” “aww”

This episode is killing me

-

And him

-

The guy smiling at her with devotion after she stabbed him in the heart and she dies is like, alarming.

It has the same white shirt, blood over the heart effect as “The Butterfly” dying last episode.

Little more worried it’s a parallel to how Cas has been acting/treated by the Winchesters from the POV of bitter Cas fans.

-

I can’t believe this last promo scene was 24 minutes in

-

Lol Sam just accusing Rowena of boiling people alive, Rowena starting to snore about their procedural methods.

-

She’s such a scene stealer.

-

Cas just casually opening HIS scene, “Face it, you’re useless and unecessary and impotent, and you will die alone. Unmourned.” TBH sounding a bit like things he may fear.

-

And I’ve lost it again at Cas pointing at Lucifer

Dipper calls Cas “pretty boy” and, like, yeah, Dipper is all of us.

I somehow have come to love Dipper like my own best friend.

Yockey has a way with characters.

-

… Sorry it had to be this way Dipper but

MY SMOL SMITEY SON IS BACK

-

Also I guess Lucifer helped but only in the sense that Cas snarked his powers back into play.

Seeing Cas walk out of the cell like YEEEEAH

-

Bleh seeing Cas and Lucifer standing shoulder to shoulder to fight the dumb KFC employees.

(No offence to actual KFC employees reading this)

-

At least their dynamic is FIRMLY established on Cas having the emotional upper hand.

-

BORED ROWENA

-

HM.

I wonder where that tape is, Sam.

-

“Are you very sure I can’t just enslave some townsfolk and MAKE them take us to the girls?”

She goes get shit done… :P

“I’m very sure you CAN but I’m very sure you SHOULDN’T”

Can I have a whole episode of Rowena banter?

“Bless your precious heart, you just described my entire life”

-

SAM where are you taking this conversation? “Even if you get the book, you’re still going to *feel* helpless” are you just spewing your depression at her?

Aaaaaare they

bonding

over

Lucifer

trauma

-

this scene did not go where I was expecting like 4 times and I am in agony

-

Yockey may be a Sam Fan Favourite all of a sudden

holy shiiiit

I mean it was Rowena saying it but they share the experience of being burned alive by Lucifer sooo…

wowowwowowwwwww

“I’m scared, Sam. All the time.”

“I’ve seen it too. What he really looks behind… behind whatever vessel. It still keeps me up at night.”

“How do you deal with it?”

“I guess I dont deal with it, not really. I pushed it down, and the world kept almost ending, and I keep pushing it down, and I don’t know, I don’t really talk about it, not even with Dean. I mean, he’d listen, but it’s not really something, I know know how to share.”

… Sam is just… wow

This is how 12x22 felt as a Dean fan.

-

But just one short chat in a car

(Btw, wandering back to add this after watching the episode because I thought it but foolishly didn’t write it down immediately because I was weeping about Sam - obviously the previous scene is Cas and Lucifer shoulder to shoulder fighting the demons, and then we go to Sam’s Very Real Trauma and Rowena’s Very Real Trauma, showing that whatever is going on with Lucifer in that moment, he’s caused lasting and irreparable damage to a main character and now a beloved fave, and is NOT a good guy deserving of any sort of redemption… or trust…)

-

Hey Brenda!

No, Dean isn’t looking for them because they left him hanging on a love spell… I hope :P

“Heard it before, they stole your heart and you want it back.”

“I doubt they know how to read” - ironic, as they can’t read the spells

-

I hope they don’t cast something ridiculous and fuck up >.>

-

As in, I do.

-

Lol, saying he doesn’t plan on being nice, Brenda just immediately gives him everything.

Brenda checks him out

lol

I love her.

-

Oh no, meanwhile Sam is still depressed

“Even if you get the book back, it doesn’t matter, you won’t ever be able to change what happened. You won’t be able to change how helpless you felt. Or how helpless you feel. You’re still going to get scared, and that feeling - that feeling never goes away.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

*Rowena gets out and needs some air*

-

Pls protect.

-

LOL she just freezes them on the spot

This is hilarious and PLEASE let her have the whole drama to herself.

-

“There was all this weird writing”

oh dear.

What have they done

-

YEP she was their contact, who ever would have guessed it

-

“And we didn’t want to call  you, because we can take care of ourselves” the Dean mirror says, to the powerful accomplice who could have helped them all along. While the actual Dean has been wanting to call Cas the entire time.

They’re really dark mirrors who are messing up in their arrogant over-confidence

-

“I did what I had to do” ROWENA NO

-

Oh boy, after this point I went to get dinner and watched all of it with my mum.

God this episode is hilarious and good.

-

Of all the wacky and wonderful, making Rowena fight a zombie was inspired :P

-

The girls not being able to bring back their mom properly without relying on their magical super strong ally coooould be Sam and Dean not trusting that Jack can grab Mary and come back all on his own accord and help them get her back - Billie’s warning about topping the cosmic house of cards is still on my mind especially in a Yockey episode, and if Sam n Dean get too “we can do it!! we’ll find a way!!!” about getting Mary back, they might fuck up what could have been an easy win if Jack did it, since as Cas points out he’s intuitively good and so powerful he can do stuff like that.

-

Sam is eight feet tall, canon.

-

“Alright, let’s go kill some witches. You want that?” Dean throws Sam the hexbag.

-

I’m… not 100% on what happened in this Cas and Lucifer fight, because it not only seems too good to be true, but Mark P is still bumming around set and we have whatever’s going on with him and Sister Jo next episode - which I’ve not seen promo stuff for because I came straight back to finish these notes, but perhaps what Cas did to him is survivable and he’s definitely not WITH the Winchesters (Cas is a Winchester) but they’re on his trail as he tries to recover from …

Badass of the millenium.

-

Anyway. Love how Lucifer is all hurr blurr gimme your grace and Cas is like… no. and then Lucifer is like trust me bro and Cas is like…  no.

Cas’s hair in this scene is out of this world.

“Fool me once”

STAB

“This is me. Learning from my mistakes.”

I am in loooooooooooooooooove

-

“Oh, wonderful, I’ve been stalling them until you arrived!”

I am in loooooooooooooooooooove

-

Honestly I haven’t mentioned it for a while but “Sammy! They’re really weirdly strong!” “It’s probably a spell!” is the ridiculous mid-fight expostion I’ve mocked Buckleming for so I’m feeling a weird vibe here, Yockey.

-

“Magic won’t work on this abomination! Have you got any suggestions!” Rowena shrieks

“Try shooting it in the head!” Dean yells,while struggling with a knife held at his throat by his brief soulmate. The younger sister is taking swipes at Sam.

-

Rowena killing the zombie is the best thing ever.

-

God damn why did it have to happen in an episode where Cas stabbed Lucifer because DANG

-

“Impetus bestiarum!”

Oh we know this one.

“End it.”

It’s HORRIFYING how she makes the siblings kill each other to death, given that she can do that to Sam n Dean any time :P

-

It’s interesting how Sam does the 10x18 book thing, ish, again, because I very nearly voiced the Book of the Damned comparison earlier when they were standing over their dead mom for the first time, as one of the more blatant examples of desperation to save a family member involving a book. Sam pulls the exact same move of pretending to surrender the artefact but letting the important part go to Rowena, only this time he doesn’t chain her up, the sympathy he has for her about Lucifer - and I think this is genuine feeling from her and genuine self-defence so Sam isn’t TRICKED - means he lets her take it without any personal gain for himself. Almost like a thank you for the conversation letting him open up about it.

-

She DOES make a big old emotional plea. “He ALWAYS comes back” and we’re seeing Lucifer going through some pretty rough times, losing some grace, getting STABBED

(yeah babe)

-

“Can’t believe I fell for a love spell.” Yeah tell us more Dean

-

Sam just laugh about the details the sell the story.

-

“Girls beat us up all the time!”

“True.”

“Hey, you know Rowena’s not our friend, right.”

Look, I am mad in love with her right now but this could be A+ foreshadowing that the Big Bad at the end of the season leaving us all on a KILLER cliffhanger isn’t Michael or Lucifer or some shit with Jack but… Rowena, striding in with purple flames behind her, just like, hello boys.

-

This whole conversation my heart was thumping like crazy waiting for Cas to walk in and one-liner basically EVERYTHING they said with some badass shit

-

“Hope she makes him suffer”

Me too

-

“How about honestly?”

Yay. Communication. At this point the episode has fucked me up so much I can barely comprehend that the Winchesters are talking to each other like… honestly about feelings and shit :P

“I know what Rowena is dealing with. She’s not the only one who feels helpless.”

Dean knows but he’s determined to pull Sammy through it, because seeing SAM like that. OW.

-

Sam says “Mom is still in hell - basically” like he’s correcting himself for that assumption, but the parallel is so obvious they can see it themselves and mis-label the AU

-

Dean’s got the confidence they’ll work it out together, but Sam has no plan and no idea how they’d get through it.

-

Dean is left to regret.

-

Rowena meanwhile, levels up to the coolest fucking thing ever, and she’s in her PYJAMAS.

This is a victory for pyjama-wearers everywhere.

-

I don’t think any of the parallels to her intro are accidental - using a hotel room, reminding us of impetus bestiarum a few minutes ago, then having her eyes bleed as part of the spell as if she too was bound that badly.

And then her power returns to her

And she is…

transcendant.

I am so excited.


	13. 13x13

*goes to sit at the unpopular table*

Went to bed at 10, up at 7 for the ole watching Supernatural grind… *offers you all a chocolate biscuit*

-

*waves hi at Michael* *and Kevin*

All the PoC are shoved in an AU… Thankfully now Rowena is back I can’t say with the SOLE major female character but

-

Oh gosh they’re using Yockey’s dialogue to explain everything, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry

-

IS CAS OKAY?

Why are you spitting blood… You weren’t stabbed THAT badly were you?

-

*remembers stabbing Lucifer*

You know in AtlA where Zuko made a good decision and prompty collapsed in an angst coma at the inner turmoil of doing the right thing?

-

I have no clue why that all happened except to allow Lucifer to leg it.

Which, I mean, at least something happened to explain why Lucifer legged it.

-

WHIMSICAL MUSIC.

OTT HETERO NONSENSE

I guess Dabb era means they’re allowed to destroy expensive wedding cakes again now no one can tell him off for it

-

Is that an Observer?

-

Oh, creepy cupid

-

It can not be good for Lucifer to eat cupid grace even more than normal grace because it’s probably a Voldemort thing about love hurting him blah blah blah

Marghe was talking about this episode being a potential 9x03 parallel and I agree - and Lucifer’s already messing up by voluntarily stealing grace just to keep himself alive for his own wanting to be alive purposes at the first opportunity. And we have cupids instead of reapers

and also I guess Cas wants to go back to the Bunker and no one’s gonna boot him out if we’re lucky :P

-

Poor cupid. You only looked creepy as a circumstantial thing to watching these people fall in love with a besotted smile, no one understands your work :<

-

Omg we didn’t even see if Cas stole a car to get back… I must KNOW

-

Anyway here’s the sneak preview scene

Oh it gets worse; Cas is like “I met with Lucifer” instead of “Lucifer showed up and I had to hustle him off to a bar to stop the angels coming back and killing us, and then when I tried to contact you he stole my phone, and btw thanks for coming to my rescue in time.”

Aka Cas can only be on the backfoot in this argument by his own social ineptitude at describing it/because the writers want him there

-

“She’s alive. That’s all I know, sorry.” Yes, good. Because Jack’s with her so he’ll make it all good and honestly the fact we haven’t seen what’s going on there since 13x09 is kinda weird because this is all time passing that Jack is with Mary and they only have one clip to show us of that - this is stretching the dramatic irony writing of the season to breaking point by not revisiting them sooner, as it’s a loose end that would have IMMEDIATE pay off aka they aren’t just sitting there staring at each other for months, and we know off-screen since BEFORE CHRISTMAS that Jack would help Mary and whatever delays are keeping him and idk his new BFF Kev from busting back to our world are manufactured to fill these weeks. I mean not like they can’t have delays and problems, especially as Jack is out untested learning what’s up with himself away from all his parental influences, as his big test, but the storytelling in the main part of the show is relying on what’s happening in the AU for tension and Lucifer telling Cas she was being tortured is like, the last time HE saw her, and WE know Jack is with her so things are probably different, and now Cas is lying to the Winchesters about Mary so as not to upset them while unintentionally perhaps backing up whatever is going on with Jack. Or not! Who knows! It’s been long enough the one glimpse of them staring at each other is starting to wear thin to give us any meaningful dramatic irony in these moments and they really ought to have had at least a teaser in the AU in 13x11

-

Yep here’s the parallel to the street scene in 9x03, except that Mark P is such a ham that he’s doing a pantomime version of “I’m cold” complete with the directing showing us some warmer winter coats in case we didn’t get the message, and then he starts staring at food… He can’t be human so idk why without headcanoning hard about why it’s affecting him so much when Cas immediately stopped caring about food when he stole grace.

-

Maybe, I headcanon, being stabbed was bad enough that all the grace he had and stole went to repairing himself but it’s a finite supply and he’s already to the stage Cas was in in 10x01

-

Oh now he’s miming being hungry. “Hungry? Ew!”

-

The fact he was looking at burgers as a Cas parallel and not a fried chicken joint for immediate emotional pay off is honestly the biggest failing of this episode so far

-

Asmodeus is like “shit they got away as soon as my back was turned” Ketch is like “lol (but posh)”

-

They have a weird staring each other down moment which Ketch either wins or Buckleming think that Asmodeus won but Ketch still won because Asmodeus admits to being monumentally stupid before giving Ketch his orders.

Like

I literally can not tell what the intent was here which is the most meta commentary on their dialogue I have ever witnessed and if it was not 7:30am and still mostly dark I would be howling with laughter. As it is, I feel a tear appearing in my eye as I take another chocolate biscuit.

-

Now HERE is a surpringly good use of dramatic irony from Buckleming which unfortunately is not actually betrayed anywhere in their dialogue (e.g. “I stabbed him but he seems to be fine”) when Asmodeus tells Ketch an angel blade to the heart will down Lucifer at this point. Basically relying on that this happened at the end of last episode (and the directing reminds us in flashbacks & recap) to confirm the dramatic irony and with these writers I’m only like 63% sure they meant to do this because I have a strong nagging doubt that they don’t even read anyone else’s scripts.

-

If Asmodeus/Ketch becomes this fandom’s Kylux I’m outta here

-

*Lucifer fails to learn basic human decency from the homeless man* I’m really hoping this is a metaphor which they actually stick to - that he’s self-serving and mean and refuses to even adapt his behaviour as a guise to benefit from human decency by pretending to be nice to get what he wants then…

They could just be showing him to be hopeless now and then use a stronger inciting incident later - Jack is a motivator for him like basically nothing else, but none of this *so far* indicates we should actually care about him as a person regardless of what he might do for Cas’s son later in the season

-

I also thought he might offer to heal the guy for food that didn’t come from a dumpster but instead he’s getting a tip off about Sister Jo

(Honestly, I’ve never dumpster dived but the stats about throwing perfectly good food away are so horrific that this seems like really misrepresenting dumpster diving, mostly because it implies the restaurant would keep food around long enough for it to go slimy and smelly, rather than throw it out while it’s still completely good but no longer something they can sell, e.g. unclaimed pizzas, mishapen stuff, slightly burnt things, etc.

The fact that Buckleming seem unaware that “Next day pizza” is literally a thing and not gross and that fast food doesn’t immediately expire but that you can eat left over pizza the next day without incurring any wrath of god speaks a lot to their privilege and Hollywood’s impression of poverty, and this utopia where there’s no waste and you can just throw out last night’s pizza which is now skanky and rotten, and eat something better >.>)

-

Huh, Dean and Cas appear to be alone and Dean is apologising for not knowing he’d been kidnapped which is literally the sort of scene which I’d hope would mean no one is in my inbox saying he doesn’t care this time around.

“I-I-I-We should have known it wasn’t you.”

Sooooooooooooooooooooo close. SO CLOSE. SOOOOOO CLOOOOOOOOOSE.

Awww they’re making excuses at each other. “He’s a shapeshifter. I got myself captured.” “but if Sam and I knew…”

“I’m fine Dean.”  
“You sure about that?”

in 100 years when I get here THAT’s going in the “Dean n Cas are in love” meta series.

-

“I told Kelly I would protect HER son. I intend to keep that promise.”

Interestingly, we’re halfway through the season and Cas appears to have no idea Jack thinks Cas is his father, or any inclination to do more than protect him out of the goodness of his heart and another promise to look after someone in need of protection, making no positive affirmations to suggest he thinks of Jack in a fatherly way. Noted last episode, feeling the urge to comment this episode :P

I am not implying this is an entirely bad or ominous thing or whatever, but 1: Cas barely knows him so this is perhaps more healthy, 2: I am still dubious about how Jack originally nabbed himself a guardian angel and Cas has made NO comment on this scenario or, 3: discussed what it felt like on his end of what Dean has been accusing Jack of “sockpuppeting” Cas… I think it was much more grey area than that and Dean’s mostly stopped accusing Jack of it, but it leaves massive questions. And 4: it means Cas is still doing this as a duty to Kelly rather than personal investment/parent feelings as his outwardly stated motivations, and it plays into the grey area of 5: we still thematically have Cas with a guardian angel burden just like I thought after 12x19 that this is what Jack wanted from Cas and after the presentation of how it was so bad for Cas to be the Winchesters’ guardian that season, coming to a head in 12x19, I still think that his relationship with Jack is offering an alternative to directly critiquing that relationship anymore without damage between himself and the Winchesters, but still allowing some exploration of duty and the guardian angel burden, and perhaps the show is in no rush to have Cas leap into fatherhood when this parallel serves his arc so much better. Which also means 6: that nothing is over despite the progress he’s made towards personal growth recently and all his old trauma and burdens are still hanging from him, he’s just in a better place than he was with various new hopes and directions.

-

Dean says nothing, and Moose Interruption Occurs.

-

I have been wondering since the first promo clips revealing Donatello returning if they’d try and have a prophet-off with the AU and use his powers to either connect with Kevin or the AU… I wonder how right I’m about to accidentally be now we know a bit more about all this

-

“… Now, it’s gonna be harder than it sounds”

you think.

So this is Dean completely ignoring Billie’s warnings and going full steam ahead huh

-

*pulls out the demon tablet as well*

Oh boy you guys are really getting into the bad decisions

-

Not mentioning what happened to the angel tablet is a pretty good swerve around reminding us Cas destroyed it “all for one man” because he’s “in love with humanity” but you can’t get past me that easily *taps nose*

-

… this is a good time to remind everyone that Gadreel left all of Kevin’s notes on the table when he walked out with the angel tablet.

You know

the notes where Kevin translated the entire angel tablet including the footnotes into ancient Sumerian

you know

a language

that maybe

someone who’s been around

since ancient sumerian times

might be able to read

you know

like

Cas

*points at him for emphasis*

-

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/170677457313/i-i-hit-a-wall-translating-the-tablet-into>

-

Also seriously why would the same spell be on both tablets. I’d be extremely Buckleming disappointed if it was, and much much happier if 13x12 was an ominous warning about going around reading strange tomes and tablets and just doing whatever freaking spells you half understand that you find on them.

Remember, Kevin is a super-genius Princeton applicant who even in the AU was nurtured by Michael to be super smart like his freaking COURT WIZARD, and did a lot of maths and theory to make it work that apparently even Michael couldn’t. (Obligatory throwback to the intro of the tablets and the reminder that human creativity and genius can do what super-smart monsters can’t, via Charlie, Kevin’s narrative pair.)

-

Chicken wings, huh

(37 buckets tracks with how many bad hotdogs Kevin ate and gave himself a stroke over while translating the demon tablet the first time, I suppose.)

-

I mean we knew it was coming, because set spoilers, but you KNOW how much happier I would have been if it had been the Lucifer thing. You know.

-

Meanwhile: the extent to which I don’t trust Buckleming is that I am wondering if the director cut an anvil line when they’re like “who’s killing angels!?” and it just cuts to the next Lucifer scene wordlessly

-

I also would have no clue how intentional the “who’s killing angels” connection is to 4x16 where that was the line of interrogation on Alastair and it turned out the first angels to be killed on the show were by Uriel for Lucifer, meaning that question still at the end of the day is answered by “lucifer”

-

Hi Danneel

Query: if she is an angel, what does SHE need the cash for? :P

I assume that “for the fallen” sign is high irony about her being a fallen angel and she’s pretending it’s a charity donation in exchange for healing

I suppose she can buy nice outfits with it

-

*exposition crime scene*

tiny redeeming factor about Dean talking about how boned they are and Cas turning to look at him and agreeing “epically”

Also for the first time they’re all in long coats together praise the lord

-

Okay I think her name is Eliel? I am not sure how to spell that at all, I’m just guessing because it sounded like “L I L” and then I angel-fied it, so tl;dr I’m gonna keep calling her Sister Jo and/or Danneel :P

-

Oh good some exposition. Well at least she has literally explained the money is for the nice outfits XD

I like her. She’s not scared of Lucifer, and she’s one of the angels who slipped notice after the fall and started living her life as she wanted.

“So… Ca-ching!” I really like her now :P

This puts her in direct opposition to Cas not just at the start of season 10 when he was rounding up fallen angels and sending them back to Heaven with Hannah - when his heart wasn’t really in it anyway - but more directly and importantly with 9x22 where he had sent a large amount of his army out to local hospitals to perform miracles on the DL for no reward except,  you know, angels should help people. Their hearts are in completely different places, with completely different understandings of what angels can and should do on earth if they are to be here.

-

She bargains for her life with the same thing the wraith was going to do with Patience in 13x03, and how we’ve seen some monsters feeding in the past - notably the grigori angel that was eating soul energy in the place of grace but was essentially the same set up.

-

Lucifer’s also found someone smart enough to help him who he might actually listen to (since the homeless man would have helped had he listened but he wouldn’t respect what a human says vs another angel maybe giving him some pointers for surviving down here).

-

Sam, being the good wingman, leaves Dean n Cas to interview someone together while heading off alone

-

Sam’s hair is ENORMOUSLY fluffy

-

Which reminds me, it’s pouring with rain outside so I’m not going to get away with leaving my hair a day after getting it dyed, I sort of need to wash it BEFORE the sky does it for me and turns everything I own purple :P Idk if I’ll be able to finish the episode before I have to go to yoga… hm. It’s finally daylight-ish

-

Oh of course they have creepy sexy grace eating going on because this whole grace vampire concept wasn’t sexy enough when it was bald little cupids.

-

*Dean casually in the foreground pulling out an angel blade*

That is your WIFE, sir

-

And you should hear what she and Lucifer were doing

-

Cas goes first :D

-

LOL Ketch

-

“Oh it’s only you”

How DARE

the original flavour TFW line up has just busted into the room with you, you are in the presence of GODS

-

“Isn’t it possible that I’m simply trying to strike a blow for the good of humanity?”

“No, that’s not possible”

Listen Cas’s snark is weaponised now. How did Ketch not crumble into ASH

-

no one says Huzzah

-

Thanks Cas

-

Listen however many gifs there are of that move (omg Cas looking at Dean, Dean nodding to him, Cas Doing The Thing) there are not enough so I’m gonna just… make one…

-

Lol, just throw him in the trunk.

“I like that plan.”

Oh the wall dividers from the fake 5x04 set are on the stage too. It’s DEFINITELY being used for performances of Supernatural The Musical in between healing sessions

-

Aniel? Eniel?

Danniel

-

Stop putting Cas in the backseat to moodily stare into the middle distance between the Winchesters! He’s earned shotgun a million times over! He was in PRISON and you DIDN’T KNOW

-

A neon sign where all the letters are out except “AU” in “Restaurant”

-

At this point I’m assuming Danniel is seducing Lucifer for her own purposes and honestly whatever go for it I guess, if you win, and this isn’t any creepier than it already is

-

The fact he ate a cupid and all that is probably relevant

-

Tbh them flopping onto the bed after is still somehow the least weird of all the weird crap Buckleming have made the characters do and I don’t know if I’m numb to it or because it’s Lucifer I have negative investment in his character anyways but you know, whatever floats their boat :P

-

“It’s always so strange, that final moment, when I’ve lost just enough grace that I’m almost - ” “Human.” “I feel… emotions. Sensations. Things they must feel.”

Honestly she’s sounding more like Cas or Hannah than Lucifer going through his experience, almost like being a more generic angel, as soon as she loses grace she gets more affected than he does in the ways he’s been affected where he cares only about being cold and hungry. And lonely. Bleh :P A concession to emotional weakness - he does love to be adored and surrounded by people who’ll tell him how great he is.

He says he can’t see how they go on but she says she sees how there can be pain, “but also hope. Love even. Angels can only imagine.”

She’s reeeeeally getting back to that Cas in 10x01 dialogue where Hannah was confused about human things, and Cas described to her what they were and that they were good things to feel on earth.

Ow.

-

She envies humans, because they can “Be anything.”

it’s like we’ve come full swerve back to the stuff from the start of season 10 that was so exciting for Cas exploring the intricacies of humanity… Yikes.

-

Wow her job sucked :P I can see why she went and asked for change when facing an eternity of that… More suggestions that Heaven is not really something that can or should be restored, never mind how volatile it was and how the angels engineered the original apocalypse. The entire system is pointless and just makes dangerous bored angels… The kind of angels who hop on the Lucifer bandwagon as soon as it comes into town because being righteous on behalf of Heaven is pointless to them. Why take a stance against Lucifer in the first place if your moral alignment was always to Heaven first and Heaven sucked that much.

“Goodness” is not an inherent alignment for angels… Looking to a leadership they trust to be good is what they were built to do, and assuming their causes are good because they’re on them is another pitfall of that. The other is just all the angels who turn against Heaven entirely >.>

-

Lucifer says he’s “going to be a father” which, uh, seems like this episode was written last year and then re-written for THIS year because he really ought to be talking about how he IS a father and he’s looking for his son…

-

He starts maybe feeling feelings, and hastily gets up to start posturing, at which point he does actually say he’s going to find his son.

-

Lol, HERE’S Casmodeus in a scene that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.

Donatello casually tells Casmodeus that he has the demon tablet. Honestly, they probably ought to have, you know… explained everything that happened to Kevin to him… Like oh hey btw this is one of the most desired objects in the universe being the word of god n all and wowweee we’ve had some problems with people stealing it and our prophets in the past. Maybe sit tight and don’t answer the door?

-

Or go out and get huge buckets of chicken and chat to any of us who isn’t where you think we should be

-

Please don’t start talking about the ingredients for the spell in public

-

dear god the worst bit is they made a character plausibly dumb enough to drop the idiot ball for them to the point where Asmodeus is probably best served to just leave Donatello where he is and walk him back and forth from the chicken place every day

-

They become unexpected friends and at the end of the day he can’t bring himself to kill his goofy prophet buddy

-

“I’m the only person on the planet who can read the thing”

Budddyyyy.

-

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude. Now he’s just telling Casmodeus that Jack’s in the AU and

*takes his chicken away* You’re grounded. Just. Go to your room.

-

Asmodeus’s voice coming out of Cas is wrong and bad.

-

Asmodeus is unimpressed with your offbrand chicken

-

aw crap I have to go

Last 10 minutes drama when I get home… They’ll open 100 portals and it will be a Mess.

-

it never bodes well in a Buckleming episode when there’s 10 minutes to go and TFW get out the car to go confront Lucifer.

-

Danniel is like “Castiel, what are you doing here?” like it wouldn’t be blatantly obvious :P

-

I am pretty sure she’s tricking them into thinking she’s more of a hostage than she is but it’s hard to tell tbh, given these writers and their history of writing sexy encounters between characters which should not have sexy encounters, and that sort of tension in the writing is not particularly where you want the ambiguity to be resting in character dynamics :P

-

I think maybe she is after telling Lucifer that she told them how weak he was, assuming that he’s actually strong enough to take them out and has been snacking on her grace non-stop  somehow

-

Okay yeah she is betraying them for love, and I add a confused “phew” onto the end of that thought. I have no idea how I feel about them tbh and I never worked it out on the bus ride around town >.>

-

Ketch really wants them to stab him, huh? He hasn’t said anything this conversation to de-escalate the situation, used a demon bomb on a room full of angels, including Cas so if it had worked it would have hurt him but it didn’t even work so he just wasted something expensive, and then he’s like, fine, let’s all work together and Sam’s like dude no and Ketch is like, fine, will you trust me if I tell you I’m working for Asmodeus?

Dean’s like “… they don’t let me say fuck on this network but how the fuck does that help??”

Ketch offers to pass information BACK to them from Asmodeus, which absolutely does not patch up the leak of their prophet wandering off to get fried chicken and coming back with KFC

-

“I’m the lesser of at least three evils” that isn’t really very reassuring either mate

-

Also with the terrible sales pitch: Lucifer trying to convince the angels to let him run Heaven with Danniel as his queen

I can’t even work out if he’s pretending he can make new angels or not, but I sort of feel like he totally can’t and it would go about as well as the Plum sisters trying to resurrect their mom, who in this weird instance stands in for God

-

“How would you like your wings back” baaaaad idea

-

Cut to Donatello munching a million chicken wings

-

How is he not dead

-

*Cas side-eyes the enormous pile of chicken wings too*

-

“We need him” Yeah, being needed still sucks and even if you need someone you can still want to shoot them as soon as they’re not useful >.>

-

Oh dear, Lucifer got what he wanted. And Danniel is his queen, exactly as SHE wanted.

-

And Ketch and Asmodeus are back to sharing a drink like THEY wanted since they were on a holiday cruise together when Cas escaped and are apparently just an item now

-

Oh no apparently he was going shopping getting some artefact

An archangel blade which doesn’t look anything like any sword we’ve ever seen any archangel ever hold before and also no one has ever stabbed an archangel with

-

uuuuuuuuuuuugh

-

I don’t like this at all and it’s entirely because Gabriel had such a good story in the first place and I really really LIKE him. And whatever they explain is going to have to be stupid by neccessity, they’re not gonna bring Raphael back which is only somewhat mitigated by bringing Michael back in a black vessel but whatever, if you have all 3 of the others running around and never give Raphael another go, it just looks bad because now we have a forgotten archangel just chilling down in season 5/6 being completely ignored for another go around when all the others do >.>

ALSO HE DIED GOOD and 9x18 was great and all but uggghh it was good because he was safely still DEAD

I mean I guess since Lucifer got free again his sacrifice was pretty much in vain anyway so maybe he should get another crack at killing him but uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugghhhhhhh

I’m going to guess I’m the biggest killjoy at the party right now, which is weird because I actually like 99% of this episode as not being terrible and for Buckleming one of their best non-rapey non-racist, only a few random dropped idiot balls episodes… And I’m assuming the Gabriel decision comes at a higher level, or at least needed a lot of approval and working into other plots.

But uuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhh. That just means I disapprove all over this place and this isn’t a criticism of a Buckleming thing, it’s the fact that I’ve had lukewarm to tepid interest in Gabriel coming back the entire time and now he’s back and I’m gonna have to live with this >.>


	14. 13x14

Caaaaaaaas.

Expectations: I’m mostly expecting some really good fun and a bunch of character dynamics in the AU I’ve been hanging on seeing for MONTHS if not ever :P I don’t really have any up or down predictions or desires or feelings about this episode except it’ll assumedly be action packed and hopefully we’re back to the dramatic irony afforded by an AU, which Glynn wrote super well in 13x04 when it came to the Empty, so I’m basically chill.

-

Love how the recap is just “Here’s why I want to make a bad idea.” “Great!! Here’s my bad idea!!”

Dean n Cas: maybe you should chillax about this and watch a movie together?

*Billie glowering at them from the void*

-

The last part of the recap is Cas looking nervously at Donatello which is something I was wondering about after 13x13 but no one else seemed particularly interested in all the weird looks they were exchanging and I didn’t really have a theory without someone to bounce off, but I guess after the “I have no soul” “Casmodeus steals your chicken” recap for him, perhaps Cas is either in general worried or sensing something more than usually off about Donatello…

-

IS JACK DREAMING? THIS IS ADORABLE AND MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT. IF HE’S DREAMING HE JUST WANTS TO BE HOME AT THE BUNKER AND SAM AND DEAN VALIDATING HIM AND SAYING THIS IS WHERE HE BELONGS

brb getting a stuffed toy

LOL okay this is tragic for what it says about Jack, but we have GOT to appreciate how dream!Dean and Sam wandered into a room, immediately managed to set it on fire and seal the door behind them… like… I watched 3x03 recently for some old “lost my shoe” nostalgia and this makes them even worse than Sam in that episode. :’)

ANYWAY OH NO MY NOUGAT SON IS WORRIED HIS POWERS WON’T SAVE HIS FAMILY AND WILL ONLY BACKFIRE ON HIM

THEY JUST WANT HIM TO OPEN A DOOR

-

(PS: his perspective on this is utterly skewed by who he is as a person and I really don’t advise opening a bunch of doors for them willy nilly just because they ask :P)

(Hi my narration of this episode is basically just Billie)

-

Okay so if they were going to make us want to hate Zachariah immediately again on introduction, having him mind-tormening Jack just like the good ole days when he messed around with Dean is a great way to do it. I’m just immediately like GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY NOUGAT CHILD.

-

Poor Jack :<

-

I guess in this case as it was a manipulation not a dream, Zach was using the set up of dumb Sam n Dean locking themselves in a room and setting it on fire after some casual emotional manipulation to make Jack feel happy and welcome and inclined to save them, in order to make him open the door for them… If there is ANYTHING we can commend Zach for, it’s knowing exactly what parts of people’s emotional landscape to throw back in their faces to upset and manipulate them…

-

I love how after a billion years we actually get to see Michael and Zachariah interacting, as well. It’s a slightly different set up - soldier and commander rather than management and CEO as Zach himself cast it back in season 4/5.

-

Donatello has an absolutely disgusting work space, and seems to have been banished to the basement to stink it out with chicken because working in the library has probably got intolerable to the others.

-

There is a LOT of flashing in this episode and I don’t like it >.>

-

Cas comes in with breakfast, and Donatello hides all his notes in a panic after Asmodeus has been whispering to him. Cas looks so judgemental I can’t tell if it’s about the chicken or the acting weird or what, but the way he storms out and closes the door behind him makes me wonder if he’s the reason Donatello has been banished from the library :P

I want the conversation where he tells Dean they have to move the prophet because he stinks.

[added with end of episode hindisght: oh god]

-

I think Donatello’s writing the large-print version of the spell for Asmodeus while not wanting to reveal just yet that he’s cracked it

-

“If bacon’s what kills me, then I win.” Honestly, you could probably write about Dean’s poor diet as a means of self-destruction to tempt fate to give him the non-clawed to death by some random monster ending.

It’s a sort of bleak commentary on his endgame BUT it does flip it around from “I will die being clawed to death by some monster first so why does it matter what I eat” and in the most negative terms possible, projects forward to a reality where Dean dies from food rather than monsters or by his own hand (directly). It’s like a lil baby step towards understanding and accepting a reality where in more positive terms he doesn’t die via monster because he’s busy having a happy ending or well-earned retirement.

The other thing of course is that Billie showed him a million ways he could hypothetically die but then basically implied that he won’t be dying of any of them just yet because he still has work to do and some bigger purpose to complete.

And even if it’s a small, insubstantial thing in some ways in that nothing has directly manifested to connect back to that yet, once more it’s the whole thing of feeling somewhat indestructible because if some other power needs you to be alive, then you can’t die until they’re done with you; even if it’s the cosmos itself, it’s not a reassuring message to Dean when their story has been so much about agency, and this is both defying that message and pretending he has some agency and also the nihilism of knowing you may have no agency about this so why not eat a giant plate of bacon - you’re apparently not due the massive health consequences of it any time soon…

-

There’s also a rather gross parallel of Dean to Donatello and his bizarre creepy over-eating, I suppose because he’s such a strong instigator of this plan, so Donatello is basically here on his behalf in a sense. Their plan is currently essentially the main problem right now on their end, as inaction is the best action, but this is all spurred by the inability to do nothing. The over-indulgence parallel, especially with the disgusting pile of food, is a warning connecting them, that this course of action is dangerous and should not be attempted.

[Edit with hindsight: Oh god oh god oh god]

-

Cas raises the issue that there’s problems involved in Dean’s plan, such as that they’re essentially making the tools to go where Michael is, then challenge him to race back again.

They also none of them know that the portal was a one use only thing when made this way instead of opened by Jack. Theoretically not a problem if they get Jack to open another one but a BIG problem if you don’t account for it and just rush into things and don’t know that the doorway won’t hover open for hours or days before closing itself naturally. Also opening one like Jack does means having to defend a portal from Michael for hours or days :P

The upside is that if they want to fight him they could always just take Michael’s grace to open the return portal.

-

Oh OW. The next place Jack ends up is the place he was born - right back onto that spot that Cas started 12x13 standing in, beside the very same tree. 

“Cas” comes up to him and says that he wanted Jack to see nature how it was before humans got to it - which is kinda maybe because the house was already knocked down but also a suspiciously un-Cas thing because as much as we have utterly fucked up nature Cas still has a soft spot for humans and also btw if this is Michael and Zach’s vision exactly what right do you have to talk about the world before “Humans” messed it up, huh? :P

In any case, Cas is once again standing in that spot where he died and then where his body was burned, but this time he’s here to talk to Jack, who is standing in roughly the location of his own birth.

-

Cas is like “humans will destroy everything” and shows Jack global warming, power plants, war and atom bombs, which again is something Cas must certainly know we all did, but at the same time he finds the good things in -

asfjdkdkl Jerry Wanek just rose out of the mists of time to murder me because behind this text document my desktop changed to Cas’s hotel room from 10x01 where he was lying around moping and missing Dean, before Hannah came along and dragged him onto the road to round up those angels who just wanted to live on earth, prompting them to have the “but those are human things” conversation which honestly I might have mentioned anyway but that was suspiciously good timing.

-

Okay but honestly the Cas n Jack world peace and no more global warming plan is literally 100000% something I back, as long as it’s not for totally fucked up reasons Michael sets them to do.

Obviously this manipulation is because Jack sees Cas as a father and so his word and his guidance is so powerful to him but the fact they’ve barely talked and certainly not with what Cas might actually want Jack to do, the expectations he has of him beyond knowing he’s good and can do good… This is actually the first guidance he’s given him and in a weird way now I feel like the endgame of the show, if Jack survives, very easily could be a utopia he creates on earth, because as manipulative as Zach is being, this sets something in Jack’s head which is a direction that he might go with “Cas”’s influence…

-

Of course then it gets even more out of character and even more manipulative (although I almost wonder because this is something that wanky Cas and Jack stans have been saying in fandom because they WANT them to hate Sam and Dean) - it makes a faction where Cas takes Jack and guides him alone. Jack innocently asks, “What about Sam and Dean?” Because he (and real!Cas) consider them intrinsic family. “Well if only they’d accepted you. Instead of teaching you to fear your powers.”

(Honestly the Zach manipulation starts to come apart at the seams if Jack is smart here, because his last one was Sam and Dean casually talking in a way for Jack to overhear them accepting him utterly.)

-

Ahaha but then using Cas as a stern father. “Now if you’ll just do as I say.”

This is the least Cas to ever Cas.

-

Jack sees through it because Zach can’t characterise Cas if his life depended on it (which it probably does) because he has no compassion of his own to begin to understand his character…

He starts explaining that he knows full well what is going on.

-

EVIL CAS LAUGH

-

do not want

-

Hey, wake up Nougat, now shove your weird uncle from another world and leg it to Mary

-

NO MICHAEL WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SHOVE YOU

-

LEAVE HIM ALONE

-

To be clear, I was not reacting to the very next thing to happen on screen, which was Michael throwing Zach across the room as well, because lol, but him threatening Jack and then it cutting to a new scene instead of letting Nougat fight back

-

TBH Dean asking “You stroking out” probably isn’t entirely unjust considering Kevin had a small stroke after cramming his face with hot dogs and translating the demon tablet

-

I’m like 0% convinced this spell will take them where they want to go or do what they think it will… I’m not even sure this is the same one he was writing down earlier since he was writing on the yellow legal pad but now this one is on a white page from his other notes.

“We have most of this stuff” Hey Sam maybe the fact you’re doing a sketchy spell from the demon tablet instead of the one Kevin made up based off of but not found ON the angel tablet is a BAD IDEA. BAD IDEEEEA.

-

*bad ideeeeeea*

-

Do they have dragon blood?

-

Point is: if the demon tablet is covered in rando bad spells then he could write down anything - since there’s no surrounding translation ABOUT the spell, just the list of ingredients and their instructions - and he could be giving the real thing to Asmodeus…

-

IT NEEDS THE HEARTS OF BROTHERS TO CAST IT?

GUYS.

BAD IDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA

-

Can Billie just float into the room and smack them all around the head?

-

The Winchesters stress me out

We’re like 8 minutes in

-

How does Cas not know ancient lore

-

“The demon tablet has very specific instructions on how to free them. These men are very dangerous.”

Honestly just, like… Call Jody up and have her come sit in on this and use her impartial judgement, if you won’t wait for Billie to show up. I promise you, out of context of all your drama, that sounds like the biggest red flag ever :P

-

“Then I’ll do it.” “I’ll go with you.”

:’) Okay they’re making an objectively terrible decision here but on the other hand it’s the new Destiel words “I’ll go with you” where they back up each other’s nonsense and help and offer to be there… Dean maybe has a stronger motive to go because he said he’d go with Cas in 13x07 and Cas was like nah it’ll be dangerous, I’ll be fine, and then was really not. Aside from Dean’s already-existing clinginess to Cas because of how he was DEAD for a couple of weeks earlier this year and it sucked balls for Dean

-

“Where do you keep your virgin lamb’s blood?”

*Sam rubs his face like… “Is it too late to go back in time, sell my soul, go to Hell, get dragged out of Hell by Cas, form a profound bond with him, fight beside him for 9 years, and become extremely clingy with him, so that I can be the one who gets to go with him instead of staying behind with old Chicken Breath here?”*

-

HERE’S WHAT I WANT TO SEE. JACK AND MARY!!!!

(pls stop manhandling the boy)

-

“Mary?”

IT FRIEND!

IT FRIEND WHO KNOWS YOUR SONS

It friend who is being careful not to immediately say “Hi grandma!”

“My name is Jack”

“???” … “Your mother…. wasn’t Kelly Kline?”

“You knew my mother?”

“I was there when you were born” You know Mary has been through a lot already when she’s just  like, oh, okay, this is the boy.

“You should be sixth months old.”

“I am!”

OOF.

Please bear in mind I authored these words like 3 months ago:

> Jack ducks insistently into her vision. “What’s wrong?” he asks. He looks so earnest, like he wants to fix it. Like he can if she just explains what the problem is. Mary feels a sudden impulse to ask him to do it, to wind back time until they all blinked out of existence, then set them all up to try again. And probably fall into all the same traps.
> 
> “Last year, Sam and Dean were in prison over Christmas.”
> 
> “Oh.”
> 
> “I died – I died in November, when Sam was six months old. I have never celebrated Christmas with him. And Dean – Dean still believed…”
> 
> “Believed in what?”
> 
> “I-In everything. In angels, all of it. I took that from them, all the Christmases we could have had as a family, they could have had in a stable home… It just sometimes hits me. When I think, Sam’s learned to do Christmas without me…”
> 
> “I haven’t learned how to do Christmas yet.”

I almost feel like we skipped time until Jack was six months old until he met Mary, entirely so she could be confronted with this lil Sam babby parallel, the sixth month old child she lost, that in season 12 was one of her primary motives to flee the adult version… Now she has the adult version of JACK, but who is happily 6 months old and still has the bright and shiny emotional feel of a new soul. Who still has parts of him left which are blatantly only 6 months old, not least that that’s his literal age. Jack being handed to Mary as a 6 month old to pick up where she left off with Sam, but not just that - to come to terms with what happened to Sam, via this magical lil satan baby who is so earnestly chatting to her now.

Excuse me I am very emotional about Mary and what Jack does for her, given her established trauma about Sam.

Like, the fact the writing is so clear to make this connection that Jack = Sam, to give him a connection to her lost baby… Aasjkdfhdkldas

-

Oh no, Michael has been in Mary’s head too, and showed her what he wanted to do to their world :<

-

Me and Mary instantly have the same “Oh brave sweet little Nougat” reaction when he says Michael can’t make him open the door and he doesn’t care how much he hurts him.

“He’s not going to hurt you, he’s going to hurt me.” He wanted them to bond :(

Jack only ended up here because he took his entire definition of morality from the Winchesters and that’s a Mary-centric morality where doing the ultimate good is saving and protecting her. Jack’s definition of good is predicated on helping Mary…

He didn’t even question things like threatening Kaia or the lengths Sam and Dean were going to or if they were acting rationally or ANY of the dangers involved.

-

Eeeeeee Dean immediately asking how Cas is doing even though apparently nothing has been wrong with him for a while. “How are you holding up” like there’s ongoing issues.

“I’m fine,” Cas says grumpily, annoyed Dean keeps asking, maybe even like Dean can’t trust him to just be fine and help them, when of course Dean doesn’t care how much Cas can help them - if there was something hurting him he’d RATHER Cas be honest about it and do what they can to help HIM first and foremost and aaaaaaargh please stop miscommunicating

“You know, with everything you’ve been through and I know you really want to find Lucifer.”

“it’s not that, it’s about - well it is that, but also I -”

Yeah we all want to get Lucifer and kill him, understandable to nod that one off as a given, but not the problem.

OH NO.

“Dean, I was dead.”

“Temporarily,” Dean says, CLINGING to how Cas has come back to him.

“And I have to believe I was brought back for a reason”

THE REASON IS THAT HE LOVES YOU, YOU DUMBASS

THAT IS LITERALLY THE REASON

TRUST ME, I WATCHED THE START OF THE SEASON AND SAW ALL THE DRAMATIC IRONY NONE OF YOU ASSHOLES NOTICED

I shouldn’t be mean when the characters don’t notice dramatic irony, that is entirely the point of it all

This conversation is taking place at the top of the stairs, but given the sudden craze for the Bunker Art Deco fad in coffee shops and burger joints and Tesco cafes, the entire concrete, tiles, exposed bulbs and fancy Bunker windows thing makes my jaded 2018 brain just see them on a coffee date to the local Costa Coffee because Steampunk 20s Apocalypse Bunker Punk is literally mainstream highstreet hipster fashion right now. They should be holding £5 lattes.

Am I stalling? Of course I’m stalling, emotional one on one Destiel conversations require a run up and I’m gulping down this mug of tea for fortification because I didn’t expect them to get right into it before they even left the freaking DOOR.

Glynn, leave me in peace.

“You were! Jack brought you back because we needed you back.”

BABE, NO. You literally ended last episode saying that you needed KETCH and when you didn’t need him any more *gun cocking motion*

Imma sit you down with a powerpoint presentation about need vs want and your subconscious manifestation of Benny is gonna be doing the talking.

(See now Benny and Billie are conflating in my brain to the Greek Chorus watching this and facepalming, and suddenly I need to get back to writing Andrea’s Diner because the last bit I never posted involved a whole section where Billie was suddenly important, and of course it was on Benny’s boat so they were in a ton of scenes together, and if they were standing on the deck watching Dean n Cas and judging them together, all the better. This is literally, okay, these notes are now from the POV of Benny and Billie sipping cocktails or whatever, and snarking about these idiots.)

Every time I press play I have to immediately pause to clench an angry fist. “Right. And how have I repaid him? I promised his mother that I would protect him - ” *slams pause* STOP. STOOOOP THIS.

After 12x19 when I was talking about Cas swapping the burden from Dean to Jack to explore his guardian angel instincts I had no clue it would be THIS PAINFUL because nougat child and Cas being so cool this season while simultaneously having to see him shackled to a burden I still WANT HIM TO CARE ABOUT JACK just not like thiiiiiiiiiis.

“Maybe I was brought back to help prepare.”

“For what?”

“War.”

BABE NO. YOu are not a soldier who has to fall into THIS burden toooo. I mean great you want to fight threats to humanity and protect us and all (PS: thanks for whatever you’re doing for bees and global warming on the sidelines) but… argh this is getting right back to his core programming, just reapplied in this scenario.

I don’t wanna say there’s no greater purpose because Billie literally told Dean he may have a greater purpose, and Cas will be right there with him in it, but this feels like a very unhealthy way to view it: that he has been brought back only to do this thing, which of course values his life only at his ability to do it and adds the short sighted thing that he is ONLY there for it, rather than to live.

And WE know that he was brought back by Jack not for any wild cosmic reason except cosmic reasons which are above even Jack, perhaps, but certainly the motivation to bring Cas back is given in a reminder at the start of this episode, of Jack listening in to Sam and Dean talking, hearing the opposite of what he heard to make him bring Cas back… Dean happy and accepting rather than furiously miserable at Cas’s death and blaming it all on Jack. Jack himself had no idea he’s brought Cas back - his powers reacted beyond his knowledge, and nudged Cas awake, because Jack needed Cas to be there for him, but also just to reset the balance of the family, and make things peaceful and happy again. To help Dean, who was grieving so miserably, and could never accept Jack while Cas was dead.

All it was about was Jack wanting acceptance and validation.

And they can give him that with regular old affection rather than shackling themselves to his cause…

(PS: Dean looking at Cas is the worst)

“War is what Michael does.”

“Well then we do what we do. Whatever it takes.” *Shoulder clap* *walks off*

*Cas does the “Dean just clapped me on the shoulder after saying something not very reassuring and actually quite worrying that I don’t really agree with despite knowing we kinda have to do it” face*

he does this face a lot so that might be a long sentence but I think I know what he’s about after all this time

that shoulder clap and walk out attitude is exactly why my brain inserts moments where Dean walks past Cas and gives him a tap on the ass on the way out the door as a way to end the conversation

-

HEY SAM REMEMBER THE LAST TIME YOU WERE LEFT IN A BUNKER TO DO A SPELL WITH SOMEONE UNRELIABLY SKETCHY YOU HAD NO IDEA WAS SECRETLY SOMETHING ELSE MALICIOUS AND DEAN WAS ELSEWHERE HAVING FUN?

Yeah I’m talking about 11x14 where it turned out Lucifer was around helping you do a spell that only archangel grace would power

I

you know what Winchesters never learn

Imma save the lecture

I’m going to hang with Billie and subconscious!Benny and get a drink.

-

wait so they have dragon’s blood but they don’t have the other things?

-

*slaps hand onto my mouth because Cas unneccessarily bumped Dean’s shoulder and destroyed my ability to spell unnecessarily and I’m getting the OTP flutters*

I may have to gif this :P It was such a silly move. I love when they rotate around each other.

-

Oh Dean’s wearing the really nice soft coat. Oh no.

-

“They can only be touched by a weapon touched by god” ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME YOU’RE JUST LIKE OH ANGEL BLADE WILL BE FINE WHILE WE HAVE JUST DIRECTLY CALLED BACK TO ‘THE VESSEL’ ABOUT HANDS OF GOD

This is not going to go weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell

if it does go well and angel blades freakin’ work I’m just gonna sulk :P

-

none of this reads like a good idea that just works without a hitch though because for one thing the episode description for next episode has them still looking and for another thing the scooby doo episode is the one after that and for another another thing when does it ever work that the heroes just do stuff to follow a plan and nothing terrible happens, huh? :P

-

yey Cas reciting stuff

-

*nothing happens*

“Oh, enochian’s kind of tough, maybe you got a word wrong.”

“I don’t .get. words wrong.”

Look this entire episode was worth it for that

-

hey look it’s these guys

-

Dean, don’t laugh at them for wearing loin cloths, it only reveals that you immediately checked out their crotch areas while sizing them up.

*Cas side-eyes him*

Hey look these guys legitimately don’t speak American English is this show okay?

I guess Cas is going to have to fight them

He summoned them and all

I think there’s something they weren’t warned about on that tablet :P

-

Okay, I love these brothers. Especially whichever one of Gog or Magog is feminist enough to suggest a woman might also want to fight them in single combat and they’re totally not gonna judge or disqualify her on gender.

-

I love how Cas’s entire job here is just “Dean.” “Dean.” “Dean.”

“it’s like a furry diaper.”  
“*DEAN*”

Meanwhile, I guess the feminist one is sexually progressive as well: “I will kill the pretty one” he says.

“They’re equally pretty,” his brother says. So I guess they’re just happy bi bros.

Omg I love that this is in ancient Canaanite so Cas knows what they’re saying and Dean doesn’t, so he gets to hear all this and Dean can’t know :P

-

The… small one?

Wait, no, these guys are massive, I bet they actually do think Cas is small just like Dean thinks Cas is a cute lil dude

-

Hahahaha whooops angel blades don’t work WHY DON’T YOU GUYS EVER LISTEN TO ME??????????

-

*Billie rubbing an intense stress headache*

-

Holy shit sometimes I forget that despite being the biggest idiot in the cosmos, Dean has moves.

-

Meanwhile: Cas is on his back again, must be a Thursday

-

A head-lopping for the end of season montage

-

“I hate doing this, you are very pretty”

I am glad for once in the freaking world an enemy acknowledges how gorgeous Cas is and that it pains them that they are bound in ritual combat and that in any other life they would probably be awkwardly dating

-

Dean, don’t stab him in the heart, I know he’s a romantic rival (well you don’t :P) but you need that for the spell.

I mean, okay, symbolism and all that Ma/gog hitting on Cas and you need to defend his honour etc

-

Honestly considering all the Biblical shit that Dean has fought, it’s barely surprising that he can out-fight ancient warriors with some magic shit about how you have to fight them and all :P

-

Lol they don’t have hearts.

-

Mary still has a death wish. Or rather, she’s rationalising that Jack would have to let her die rather than open the door, and she’s okay with that.

-

Oh no his powers don’t work well here :(

-

Whoops they didn’t ward the window well enough… Glad Mary has been wandering around and found a spot where she didn’t have migraines… If only I had one like that :P I guess she just thought being by the window meant light and fresh(er) air which was a little bit of a relief from all the stress of being tortured…

I suppose Jack burning his way out gets to parallel Lucifer breaking the warding in Asmodeus’s prison, but instead of being annoyed into doing it, Mary is all friendly and concerned for him and works it out and shares the idea rather than just snidely taunting him with a plan :P

-

Uhoh

-

Curse your sudden yet unexpected betrayal, Donatello

-

Yey Mary and Jack running away :D

YAY BOBBY

This is a big set.

-

“Mary Campbell??”

I love how Bobby gets to do the opposite of what Sam and Dean did to him in 12x23 - he thinks he knows who Mary is and is amazed to see her…

“Your boys??” Awkwaaard

“I thought you were a damn ghost, but it turns out you’re JUST from another world! … Which is weirder when you think about it.”

“I’m Jack!” *wave*

“Friend of the family.” she doesn’t have a real place for him yet. Certainly not “grandson” because she missed EVERYTHING where Jack was like oh Cas is my father, which would do the trick

… you know, 6 month old son of her billions of years old son

-

Oh boy Dontello REALLY trashed the Bunker.

-

I like how they were trying to get hold of Sam, and he’s just SITTING there with an ice pack on his head. Like, guys, I was taking 5 minutes and trying to work out a way to tell this without it being HORRIFICALLY embarrassing. Could you not have spent 5 minutes making out in the car before realising something was wrong so I could get a story straight where a small late-middle-aged man knocks me out when my back is turned and it doesn’t sound bad?

-

I like how “Yeah I’m right here” betrays our expectations though because the opening starts with a view of the trashed bunker, excluding Sam, and slowly pans up to Cas and Dean coming in, and you’d think maybe Sam was unconscious or tied up or kidnapped, and actually he’s at home, staring at the mess, and sulking :P

-

“The Muppet Professor attacked you?”

-

This is *exactly* the comment Sam feared

seriously, 5 minutes of snogging and he’d have been chill and answered the phone

-

Cas and Dean are just like “nah” because they already worked out the entire thing was a ruse to get them killed by terrifying (adorable) monsters on the way back and Sam’s still working on mild concussion and watching Donatello seemingly succumb to the tablet and crack

-

Who eeever would have thought this was a set up *sips cocktail*

-

Oh good there are women in the AU so that weirdo out in the wilderness was just a rando

-

Mary immediately warns Bobby that they may be pursued by Michael and that she could be bringing danger to their camp which is lovely and forward thinking of her and she is a good egg.

-

“Mary Campbell saved my ass more than a few times” *fond smile* *smile back* *Jack side-eyes this exchange*

Aside from the adorable past AU Mobby we’ve missed out on, I love this because in 12x21 especially, Toni made it really clear that they were stripping Mary back to her raw murdery hunter self, and called her Mary Campbell to do it - because being a “Winchester” for her was mostly being the housewife and mom, and it was actually her non-combatant identity, in contrast to the rest of her family whose name is most often used by monsters sneering “Winchesters” or whatever in pep talks about how they’re awesome monster hunters. But here in the AU, despite Mary Campbell unwittingly dooming this world by not making her deal (which, again, NOT HER FREAKING FAULT just as it’s not her fault in the main world that she DID make her deal and the consequences that came from it - it’s stronger character in one way but has the bad effect in the other… But this is just life) Anyway Mary Campbell here is a fierce warrior who may have died, but is remembered as someone who SAVED people and fought for good reasons. Mary has a connection to another version of herself as a warrior who was still kind and a nurturer and Bobby, who is the story’s ultimate validation of character, and often used after his death for moral crossroads and to highlight character, has a soft spot for Mary Campbell and how she was a good person, which he is extending to our Mary on the assumption that she is both as fierce and good as the woman HE remembers.

-

“Donny, what happened, man? I thought we were friends.”

This is the most ridiculously stretched application of Winchester “friend” so far on the show I think :P

-

Cas is separated from them again, watching the interrogation on the laptop.

-

Donatello accuses them of being JEALOUS that he got picked to be a prophet. I think it is safe to say with their experience they are suuuuper not jealous of whoever ends up with that job :P

He also says that he translated the whole tablet, and it’s in his head and they want to take it from him.

-

If he gets free he will be a real wild card with no soul and all that knowledge - trials, demon bombs, terrifying lore and spells, just to start with of what we know for sure is on there…

-

“You just brought me here to use me” well that, my friend, is true >.> He’s another person they need but only for the things he can do for them and not for his companionship

-

I don’t think we appreciate enough a role where someone can just cackle maniacally for as long as they like. Must be fun.

-

Donatello does some spell on Dean and of course Cas comes running and puts a hand on him :’)

-

Asdfhgjskdj I guess I am updating that touchy touchy post but here’s the sneak preview

-

*Cas staring ominously at Donatello some more*

*Jack doing shadow puppets to an audience of giggling children*

Help?? me????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

-

BOBBY AND MARY THIS IS WHAT I AM HERE FOR

I love that Bobby’s been a friendly face for like 2 minutes screen time to Mary and he’s already plying her with whiskey. Considering I’ve been giffing season 6 & 7 lately, Bobby has poured a LOT of drinks for Dean >.>

-

“You look just like her… give or take a year or two” Bobby you are being polite but your Mary died when John died in the show and that was 22 years after Mary died in the show, meaning Mary is 22 years younger than Mary Campbell when she died, so you are flattering your dead girlfriend :P

-

“What was she like?”

“Mary Campbell was a complicated woman. Brave, but sad. Full of regret.” That’s OUR Mary.

“Let me guess, she made a bad demon deal.”

“Opposite. She didn’t make one. Lost the love of her life. Didn’t move on.”

“And Dean and Sam were never born.”

She finally gets the validation she deseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerves

(also: only person in the cosmos to call them Dean and Sam instead of Sam and Dean because she knows them by age order intimately)

“Bobby, I MADE that deal. And it - I - brought my boys a lot of pain. But. What happened here? In your world? Sam and Dean stopped that war in mine.”

“Then I’d say you made the right choice.”

*Mary’s shoulders visibly lift*

“Huh.”

“Well, I don’t know much, but, I do know you done good by your boys. They hadn’t been here five minutes when they were trying to convince me to come back with them to their world.”

“You said no.”

“Mary, your world’s got your boys. This place? I’m pretty much all it’s got.”

Oh Bobby. You didn’t do such a bad job, they just did an extraordinary one. You’ve got something amazing here.

…

I think Jack is cheating at shadow puppets in the background.

HOW do you cheat at shadow puppets?

-

OMG he’s SUPER cheating at shadow puppets.

-

Ooops. Mary told Bobby what Jack was. Maybe he thinks this is malicious, maybe he thinks she’s just completely naive about angels, but he demands that Jack has to leave.

Despite how utterly adorable he’s being in the background.

-

And Mary is now bargaining that she puts Jack first, despite how friendly Bobby is.

-

Bobby tries to caution her that angels turned on them, and that Nephilim and Jack can’t be trusted, and that it’s just a matter of time.

I feel like we should still be counting warnings against Jack because even though his heart is clearly utterly pure at times, he’s still shown as dangerous or potentially dangerous every episode, only to have it subverted or for the subversion to seem obvious… Even if he does end up Nougating his way through the whole season to whatever end, I feel like it’s deliberately ignoring an aspect of the text that wants us to challenge what Jack is and his potential.

-

Aww TFW walk into a room and Sam instinctively ends up on the other side of the table from Dean n Cas.

BTW he still has one heck of a bump on his head and Cas hasn’t fixed it? Dude.

-

Dean peers into the bucket of chicken, Cas picks up the tablet to turn over and examine, Sam goes for the notes.

I feel like this is a case study of their characters.

-

Incidentally this is the room I think they should terraform into their entertainment centre, it’s been suspiciously featured repeatedly this season, and we’re 2 episodes out of either extreme disappointment or my utter delight that Scooby Doo heralded a couch in the Bunker

-

OMG lol Cas didn’t know Donatello doesn’t have a soul. This is the importance of sharing notes on all the nonsense that happens, even when nonsense seems irrelevant and silly :P

-

I feel like this is why Cas should be in every episode, and also why he is not.

-

oops they fucked up

-

“How do we fix him?”

“I don’t think we do?”

So they fucked him up

I guess this counts as collateral damage, although I am finding it increasingly funny that this seems to have all happened naturally as a consequence of showing him something evil rather than anything that Asmodeus did, so once again he loses out because Donatello is just being evil for its own sake and Asmodeus didn’t even corrupt him… And has probably lost a valuable resource.

Once again, the other writers playing off Buckleming but only to use our expectations against them? That there’s nothing they did affecting this, it’s a natural consequence of the stuff they set up from an unexpected direction which ends up reflecting on Sam and Dean as characters instead.

Thinking of which, Sam is now slumped with disappointment that they got so close with having a plan and as soon as it’s taken away it’s like they’ve pulled the supports out from underneath him :(

-

Cas is like, welp, put the poor soulless corrupted abomination out of its misery, game the system, find the next prophet who activates and get THEM to finish the translation.

Like, they’re literally turning into the prophet mill. Take them in, grind them up, collect the next…

-

“What are you doing?”

“What I have to”

CAS, BABE. NO.

-

Better hurry after him.

-

Aw shit he’s locked them out of the lovingly restored and replaced door of 7B which he has previously blown up. It’s like the opposite of the start of the episode where dream!Sam and Dean are trapped on the bad side of a door, banging on it for Jack’s help, now they’re basically trapped outside of Cas doing something bad (unless they smash in poor 7B again)…

Unless Donatello can fuck with Cas then that’s pretty much it for him.

-

Also FYI Cas at the next family meeting, this is coming up as like item no.1 for discussion

-

Meanwhile, Jack is the most beautiful soul: “These people… they’re so brave.”

He likes it there because he’s seeing people enduring and living and even having fun, and making their lives even in the harshest, most terrifying conditions.

He loves humanity :D

(You know, unlike Lucifer)

-

“I’m sorry, Jack. It’s not fair.” Gosh, I love her. She’s not laying blame on Jack, she’s saying that the world isn’t fair and that this isn’t his fault, it’s the way Bobby percieves him that’s the problem and that because of this unfairness he shouldn’t feel responsible.

… Kinda seeing that as Mary the super supportive Mom to a queer child while Bobby is being played as the parent who feels like due to the kid’s nature he can’t have them in his house >.>

-

MARY BEING PROTECTIVE OF JAAAACCK

-

Here’s Zach, hopefully to be stabbed in the face again

this is ALL I want out of him being around :P

-

I started to take a drink of hot chocolate right as Cas took his coat off and I am not ashamed to say I choked.

This is a preeeeetty bad omen, because he then says that he’s going “to do something I promised never to do to a human being without their permission” aka this is the bad Cas we almost NEVER see on screen (6x19 where he tortured the Jefferson Starship but we didn’t see how he got the info comes to mind, though that was pretty bloody)… And of course he’s been in a debate about his principles and why he’s doing what he’s doing and that he’s becoming soldier!Cas to do this thing he thinks he was brought back to do to protect Jack etc which means personal and moral sacrifices for the mission, because he matters less than Jack…

In this case the coat is being equated to the nice soft huggable Cas, and taking it off is a sign of shedding layers which Cas feel represent him the most - the “good Cas” that Crowley described all that time ago. This time he’s not masquerading as “good Cas”, he knows he’s about to cross a line, and so he sheds that image so that he is doing it consciously aware of the lines he will cross, and that this is an un-Cas-like thing to do.

And of course we had the reminder at the start of the episode that the most Cas-like thing is to love and value humanity, obviously in the mirror of a Cas who DIDN’T care and the warning was that when Cas stopped caring, then he was being un-Cas-like.

(Not that I’m saying there’s anything magically wrong or different about Cas… if you missed it I made 67 gifs about 6x20 in the last month and wrote a lot of long sobbing posts about Cas’s moral decay so I am freshly primed to be miserable about it here, now combined with what 12x19 did in stating Cas’s flaws and how they affect his characterisation…)

Aka this is a result of his devotion to Jack, backed up by his new lack of self worth centred instead of the belief that he was only brought back for a purpose and not for himself or because of Dean’s love for him, or an innocent, good need for him that Jack had, just to have a father.

-

“I’m going to strip the spell from your mind”

“I’ve absorbed too much power! You’ll fry us both!”

Sorry, buddy, but I know which one of you is in the Scooby Doo episode and which one is not

Although idk where Cas is supposed to be in the description for the next, so “snoozing in 2 layers in Dean’s bed until he recovers from this enough to watch Scooby Doo with them” might be a valid way to pass the time between 2 episodes.

-

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let you or anyone hurt the people I love. Not again”

-

Look, bad Cas is hot as fuck but I like fuffy Cas better

-

*MORALLY AMBIGUOUS BOOOOP*

-

“Yoooou, this is your fault. You used your powers!”

IT WAS ADORABLE SHADOW PUPPETS. LET THE KID BE A KID YOU ASSHOLE

Sorry, I like our Bobby better, I think, nice as it was to see a glimmer of him under this grim facade of Apocalypse Bobby for a minute earlier.

-

“I didn’t - I didn’t mean to.”

“Well ain’t that just gravy”

I have missed Bobby!talk though

Anyway story of Jack’s life there.

(Lol it’s weird to have a kid who is literally as old as this season because that phrase is… well.)

-

Bobby’s priority is to find kids and get 'em safe :’)

-

OH NO Mary and Jack are splitting up. Bad idea!!!!

-

Cas putting the coat back on as the door opens for Sam and Dean from across the room D:

-

That’s a very staged shot - Cas moves away from the unconscious/dead Donatello, and is standing halfway between him and the door, putting his coat back on, when he chooses to open the door and allow Sam and Dean to see him transitioning back in to fluffy Cas, bad Cas having done the work, and knowing the spell.

-

I suppose another way to have him off-screen for one episode is to send him away to find ingredients and have him come back just in time for Scoobynatural.

-

“Cas?!”

“Well, I know what we have to do.”

*stalks off and leaves them with a body because this is his way of walking out of a room with style*

-

Zach is such a dick.

-

I missed him :’)

-

Jack, you go back and save people from that massacre right now.

-

Mary helping lil kids is never not sad in an ineffable way.

-

Zach punching Mary is still less creepy than what our Zach did with her

-

Okay I need a gif of Mary’s fukin smirk at Zach because that was amazing and I love her

-

HI JACK

-

Thanks for melting that creep :3

-

I guess he deserved it after Zach fucked with his mind for a while.

-

Also oh dear could Jack melt angels before this?

-

AWESOME

-

Jack has learned to play Space Invaders

-

I LOVE THE NOUGAT CHILD

-

“I had to come back. Sam and Dean. They wouldn’t run. They’d stay and fight.”

What I love his how Alex always plays him so contemplative and like he’s just figuring out for sure all these facts, putting them together, and then announcing them, especially when it comes to morality.

-

I think Jack has just decided to kill Michael.

-

“I have to kill him.”

Just… don’t get into some weird Hamlet scenario trying to murder your uncle, okay kiddo?

-

Oh dear, heavy music and Cas is pacing.

I love this shot.

-

“Well?”

He seems super like tuned into fighting the fight. Soldier!Cas is scary and bad and I do not like.

Dean starts to get angry, pulls himself back, and manages pissed off but not shouting, which I think is important that he’s trying to be measured about it despite not liking Cas’s decision.

-

Cas revealed that Donatello was working for Asmodeus, “not by choice, but he was. Some people just can’t be saved.”

Cas is raaaaaaaaaapidly overtaking Sam for the “in a bad place” contender of the week, though their issues are pretty much running parallel, for different reasons to the same end.

But, like, obviously different stances.

-

“But who gets to make that choice? You? What exactly gives you the right?”

Uhoh.

“Nothing. I took it.”

“And I did what soliders do.”

Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas

Pls help him.

-

Welp, they have a fetch quest to occupy them for a while.

It’s always 4 major ingredients. This is literally as fucked up as the angel fall spell or the amara release spell…

\- the grace of an archangel  
\- a fruit from the tree of life  
\- the seal of solomon (hi again Solomon!)  
\- the blood of a 'most holy man’ (hello upcoming episode title)

I guess there’ll spec about all of these… there’s overlap between the 2 spells in the need for grace from one, and fruit from another. The holy man blood seems like a regular occurance, and there’s too much canon to casually scan for matches in my brain :P Though I remember 99 Problems where they needed a 'true servant of heaven’ to do the deed.

-

“We find those things, we can bring everybody home. And together, we can beat Lucifer, AND Michael. This is the only way we win. And this is the only way we *survive*. So like you said, Dean, whatever it takes.”

…

Not ominous at ALL.


	15. 13x15

(typed to [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) in a hurry)

elizabethrobertajones  
my inbox seems angry  
I haven’t checked for tone but I have 10 messages :P

elizabethrobertajones  
oh no I’m a few minutes in and a fancy woman with big hair and good taste is hitting on Sam while he wears his combo orange-on-orange from the last heist episode  
I can see the problem

elizabethrobertajones  
since i’m not taking notes because I need to be quick I’ll also add the thief apologised to God before smashing open the display case (aka walls between worlds) then apologised to “mother” after >.>

elizabethrobertajones  
also Sam has forgotten doing this exact search to do a between realities spell in the French Mistake but that WAS 7 years ago  
and he had the benefit of just buying it with Jared’s money instead of actually going after it :P  
RIP Jared’s credit rating  
oh and then he said “It’s very important to us… to me.”  
Sam, not Jared  
I mean Jared technically said it, but a different one :P

elizabethrobertajones  
wait a minute my entire issue with this episode’s premise is explained by “this is America” and I should have realised sooner when the cold open was in malta :P  
I’ve been sitting here thinking… just… go down the road… crack open a church yourselves… apologise to God etc  
y'all don’t just HAVE reliquaries hanging around  
I’m sitting here like pfft I’m not even religious and I’ve seen a dozen of these and blood of a saint

elizabethrobertajones  
I suppose asking Cas to go raid a church on the trip home is just like… off-limits because angel wandering into a church, smashing a display case, and walking out looks bad  
I mean I have *literally* clapped eyes on the MacGuffin of this episode more than 1 times in my life, Mittens  
this is not a rare and mysterious item :P  
I have seen and could locate them a Blood of a Saint if you gave me 10 minutes with google and the train fare to go steal it

elizabethrobertajones  
Still, there must be some Catholic churches that brought relics with them to America  
like I mean, just for the sheer sake of safe passage across the water…  
Admittedly Europe & the Middle East have the pick of which saint and where but still…

elizabethrobertajones  
this is frustrating because they’re talking about boring historical artefacts as if they’re super magic secret items and I can only conclude that in-universe the trade for them has pushed up prices and rarity as they’re used in spells to a bizarre level

elizabethrobertajones  
SAM LITERALLY JUST GOT KNOCKED OUT BY A TELEPHONE  
Miscommunication is the MotW as usual

elizabethrobertajones  
“You’ve taken a lot of shots to the head lately… I know that Disney princess hair gives you some padding, but…”  
Dean telling it like it is  
keeping it reeeeal

elizabethrobertajones  
is this priest a vampire? His ID card is 1000 years old  
he is clearly an immortal among us

elizabethrobertajones  
ooh close up. He looks almost exactly the same as he did in ‘66  
so  
I know Sam just took a blow to the head, but I would be asking immediately :P

elizabethrobertajones  
*sam does some maths on his phone because concussion*  
LOL he claimed he “Lost his head”

elizabethrobertajones  
is he St Peter  
or was that just irony that he had literally lost a lead on finding his head

elizabethrobertajones  
he sure can make a motivational speech, though. I’m on his side

elizabethrobertajones  
they’re following a package being sent to the US… don’t all of those end up in Guam? Are they in Guam now?

elizabethrobertajones  
okay thankfully the US postal service is fictionalised for ease  
I am starting to imagine that after all this hassle Cas shows back up like hey so I had a stop over in Paris so went to a random church and borrowed their saint’s blood while I was there

elizabethrobertajones  
“What are you doing here?”  
“Creating a distraction”  
“Creating a distraction???”  
“Lying is a sin”

I love this guy

elizabethrobertajones  
nooooooooooooooooooooo  
but he has the same inner playlist as Cas!! they were going to be such good friends!!  
yay he was just grazed

elizabethrobertajones  
iiit’s a miracle!  
you wasted it on not dying though

elizabethrobertajones  
DO NOT DRAIN THE BLOOD OF THE NICE PRIEST  
“Before you go we’re going to need one more thing”  
*smiles placidly*

my guy… no…  
hahaha  
I suppose it was all ~divine providence~ that got them to meet a most holy man that day

elizabethrobertajones  
awww Dean has faith  
….this isn’t like yet another thing playing off the bit where he said no faith back when the only thing that changed since is Cas is back or anything lol  
I want that nice vampire priest to come back some time  
he was sweet

* * *

 

elizabethrobertajones  
On the bus to yoga I solved one issue:  
Bob Singer died in 6x15  
which is why he doesn’t remember the bone of a saint thing  
contractually, if you were in that episode and died, it technically didn’t happen  
actually I’m gonna C&P that onto the end of my notes since all my meta is snark in other people’s chat bubbles today :P


	16. 13x16

Jinkies!

I am a shade distracted tallying up the eeny weeny mystery machineys but I’m dropping by to say good morning because Dean hates Barney and thought it was really satisfying to murder him, so I guess that’s someone else off his list of big game…

-

Sam graciously trying to say they couldn’t take anything… Dean in the background *urgently pulling his sleeve*

-

I love how the big ass TV was never in focus but it was THERE as this blurry black void on the overcrowded screen… We all knew it was there without the camera having to focus in on it :P

-

Dean already personifying the TV as “she” and Sam/Jared losing it and laughing

I wish I had meta points but this is really only because it’s all curing my headache I woke up with

-

Why is Sam researching while wearing his jacket. I mean I know he is so they have jackets in the cartoon but that’s just… wow :P

Definitely shouldn’t clothing meta this one

Clearly they were just so excited about their respective tasks they rushed home to read/move the TV in… the time scale makes it even more curious to suggest that Dean had been working on the Dean Cave for a while in essence but this was the thing that pulled it all together and made him willing to share his work.

-

The whole “fortress of deanitude” makes me feel even less like he was particularly inclined to share it or that this room is really for anyone other than himself.

-

Uuuh the tiny eeny weeny mystery machiney from my icon isn’t on the shelf… was that a bonus from the promo shots?

(Oh, nope, it appeared… they are legit being stalked )

-

… secondary project which I think [@godshipsit](https://tmblr.co/mGD60ojsnJvYJ46M50GM5Lw) might also be doing: screencap every hilarious face cartoon!Sam makes, and that just been slapped look is already a classic

-

Fuckin knew it, they brought Gabriel back because they joked about it in the Scooby Doo episode a year ago.

Honestly I know this was written by outside writers who might have got a wire crossed with “angel thing” and “maybe it’s the Trickster” but I find it funnier to think Sam and Dean have basically forgotten everything about him since 2009 and mostly just remember him as “the Trickster” and that was a complete brain fart when they said “angel thing” = being sucked into TV land and then remembering oh yeah the Trickster did that to us :P

Like, in the placement of the season it leans into the dramatic irony based structure of the season: we know Gabriel is back, they don’t… Whether that line was written innocently of his return has a weird meta layer of dramatic irony that the outside writers didn’t know this fact and possibly Dabb didn’t know either even if they presumably all joke constantly with Speight about it. But now we’re 3 episodes since his face showed up on screen and he’s gonna be back around next episode I think, so it genuinely works as a warm up for him, even if he didn’t cause it, just like the MotW in the early part of season 5 were all wacky enough to look a little Trickster-y on first glance as the warm up to Changing Channels… Now we use going to TV as the warm up in reverse :P

-

This also goes to show they pay no attention to the show’s colour coding and leave that for us to figure out because honestly boys it was purple magic what do you think is behind it?

-

Baby’s intro shot is unbelievably gorgeous. *shiny noise*

“How did the car get here?”

“I had the keys in my pocket? or… Seriously? That’s what bumping you about this?”

Hey, look, she’s a part of Dean’s soul. Where he goes, she goes.

-

“This is a case… We work it. We drive.” *Nyooooom*

(I should probably download the scooby doo font, then make a special nyooom gifset)

-

I can’t believe Dean screeched to a halt next to the Mystery Machine without even clocking it. When I see one in the wild my neck cracks around and I get eyes on stalks.

-

Dean’s FACE when he finally sees it!!!!

(Is like my face when seeing all the lil mystery machines in the background :P)

I can’t help it, I’m having like all the same reactions as Dean here.

Sam’s face when reacting to him, however, is UTTERLY perfect.

“Great. So we’re stuck in a cartoon with a talking dog.” HOW DARE.

“Not just any talking dog. THE talking dog. The greatest talking dog in history!”

-

Dude, Fred and Daphne are blatantly already together. He has his arm around her.

-

I know Sam always does this but I can’t believe he’s not like… 100% here for this :P Dean’s like this is the DREAM and Sam’s like *eyebrows* and Dean starts reciting like… textposts fandom wrote about how much he loves Scooby Doo. “Sam, growing up on the road, no matter where Dad dragged us, no matter what we did, there was ALWAYS a TV. And you know what was always ON that TV? Scooby and the gang! These guys… they’re our friggin’ role models*, man!”

*“except fred, he’s a wad.”

-

Oh my god, how dare Dean compare Cas to a talking dog. It’s coming from inside the house now!!

(He loves that dog, he’d take a bullet for him :P)

-

Anyway Sam is annoyingly sceptical because I guess childhood trauma growing up knowing monsters were real in a way where Dean identified with heroes and the scooby gang, and positively reflected it onto their life, Sam negatively reflected their life onto it, because knowing the reality was crushing and miserable and the scooby gang would never get eaten. (See also: Christmas episode.)

-

Favourite thing in this random diner which may or may not be Wanek-designed but is making me laugh because it’s a part of the show’s language of weird diners and Americana… The big old 70s LOVE poster over the gang’s table

-

Fred is so nice to them. I’m assuming because Dean hates him he’s just going to radiate positive energy at him the entire time. I think this is about the point to call Dean out on having once said in season 2 how  he’d love to bump into FRED AND DAPHNE when they were investigating the spooky haunted hotel. This apparent hate-on is a new thing, and I’m gonna just assume it pops up round about seeing Fred and Daphne dancing, while being stuck in this cartoon with Sam, being a perfomative top layer version of Dean with exaggerated cartoon behaviour… & Meanwhile the original fred & daphne comment came moments before the whole “why do people think we’re gay?” “maybe you’re overcompensating, you are kinda butch” exchange in which it seems kind of low hanging fruit to point out Dean has a Mulder AND Scully level crush on them :P Why does he pick out them instead of the ultimate talking dog and his stoner buddy? We just don’t know.jpg and that was like 11 years ago now :P

And yeah once again this is probably just outside writers and even stuff out of Dabb’s own time on the show, so not remembering that Dean is Pro Fred before setting up an apparent episode long subplot about this can be innocence, but once they hand the finished product over to us the viewer it’s up for us to make a canon compatible reading and all signs point due performance over not admitting a crush on Fred and his huge jaw equivalent to the one on Daphne :3

-

Sam is really not enjoying having to sit next to Scooby despite his normal love of dogs, and there’s a weird sense of the 12x10 crammed into a diner booth feeling going on his end. Next to the talking dog. While meanwhile Dean has crammed himself in next to Daphne perfectly cheerfully. It’s like, reflecting their moods in that scene perfectly re: seating arrangements, while in a completely different set up.

-

“The only thing we’re famous for is our eating skills!” “Yummy yum yum!” In which it suddenly becomes extremely apparent that Dean has based his entire persona on Shaggy and Scoob even before they get to eating their massive sandwiches

-

“I’m a hero!” Scooby says, and Shaggy helps him pose dramatically with a cape. Honestly I’m like… borderline close to reading into absolutely everything as a Cas/Scooby parallel just because Dean said that before we ever met them. But calling the talking dog a hero vs that level of self-esteem is just a bit incompatible with Cas, except perhaps as an ideal for where he ends up :P

-

PS It is around this point that I start to get somewhat weirded out by analysing Scooby Doo’s dialogue as a serious meta thing and recording it as faithfully as I do when, like, Cas says something in a normal episode.

-

Oh my god Dean stopped himself from saying “Butt” because he was on scooby doo, but Fred already said the Colonel (Sanders, not Asmodeus - it’s getting awfully crowded here :P) died from cancer, which is not exactly a fun kid cartoon level thing to cheerfully say - in fact I just went and re-watched the opening of the real episode, and they don’t even say they word “dead” - it’s ALL euphemisms. That’s 100% a new bit of world building to make the case more SPN than Scooby. Showing that there’s already a meta level of difference between TV land and what is watched.

-

“There are no words in this newspaper, Dean,” Sam says, reminding us that they can see exactly what we see here, and as non-natives to Cartoon Land, they can only read the big-print stuff.

-

It would actually make Gabriel cry to know Dean’s argument is for playing his part NOW in TV land. Like. THAT is the lesson you took away from it all. I made you a whole TV land and you TRAPPED me. And NOW you start playing your part to get out of TV land? I am - no words. None.

-

But yeah Sam points out that Daphne and Fred are already together, so, seriously Dean, let it go, like Elsa says.

-

Also Dean being defensive of Sam comparing Scooby to Marmaduke is basically the joking reaction I had to Dean calling Cas a talking dog - honestly, it’s like he sees Scooby as people, and he sees Cas as people too, so joking about it is almost like… Sam in 11x18 when he calls Cas’s vessel “it” and Dean gets wildly defensive of Cas… Like he can joke about Cas being a talking dog because whatever he’s joking about, on a fundamental level he loves Cas/Scooby on such an intrinsic level as people it doesn’t even really matter what they ARE in a technical sense.

-

“Mind if we tag along?” Dean asks.  
“I think that’s a SWELL idea!” Fred declares. Bahaha. Sorry Dean, I think Fred is going to validate and love you no matter how much you want him to be a dick.

-

Poor Sam. I mean. That’s a permanent mood of this episode, but.

-

Once again, still getting serious Dark Side of the Moon vibes about the sky here.

-

Aaaaand now Fred and Dean and flirting over how fast their cars can go.

-

AU where 4x03 happened in reverse and Dean stopped John buying a chevy impala at the last minute so they’d have their iconic VW van just like the mystery gang, and this was a face off between the Mystery Machine and SPN’s iconic Goth Mystery Machine.

-

“Why do you hate Fred so much?”

…..

Dean, hon, if you list “perfect hair” as a reason to hate someone, I have news for you. *puts a hand on his shoulder*

-

Round 1: Fred.

-

OH NO. CAS. had you just got home and were just coming down the stairs when everyone got zapped, and you’ve been jogging after them ever since? I’m so sorry sweetie. Please steal a car before trying to jog the rest of it.

-

Dean is rapidly going off the Mystery Machine in the face of it being driven by Fred “I’m so pretty and attractive boo hoo hoo” Jones

-

“Dude, get over it.”  
“No.”

You know, me and Dean are basically the same person in a lot of ways.

-

They’re really channelling Sam’s season 8 hair

-

I’m still actively upset that we have a Colonel Sanders this season just because of the scooby doo episode.

-

Sam’s complaint like, this can’t be legal

I guess lawboy would know

-

I love Velma reassuring Sam that ghosts aren’t real. She’s very used to lanky men who freak out about these things :P

-

Dean’s speech about the cartoon peeps being good and innocent and pure is just… awwwwwww. Let him have his nice things from his childhood and don’t ruin them with monsters!!

Dean never got any of that for himself - his whole reason he identifies with them and Sam doesn’t is because they are living a good and pure version of what Dean grew up knowing they do - while Sam just resented them for being able to live a life where it WAS that easy.

-

“He’s the bad guy” *points at a guy maniacally cackling*

“You don’t say.”

To be fair, this episode has an extremely obvious plot even if you hadn’t seen it a million times. Sam asking why they can’t just skip to the end and Dean protesting that it’s about the journey is extremely meta though, when it comes to fandom and our issues with waiting for ongoing content to unfold for us…

-

Oh silly, boys and girls don’t sleep in the same room! We’re a kid’s cartoon!

guess you’re with me, slugger :3

… awesome

-

Sam found cartoon pyjamas. Dean… is literally embracing the lifestyle. Sleeping robe, huh?

I mean. Yeah. This was totally normal for the time and cartoon setting and he’s got the lil night cap that everyone wears in the cartoon when they’re sleeping, but… I mean… this is DEAN. Wearing a nightgown. He’s the best tourist. All the same vibes as 6x18 and him going full cowboy just because he could, while Sam just… was Sam.

-

Honestly if you watched this from a more Sam-centric POV would you be begging him to let loose and wear the nightgown, and let go of his rigid no fun no tourism attitude or what :P

-

Anyway Dean continues to be the more cartoon of the two, and also to embrace what in any other setting would have him recoiling against gender roles and masculinity he thinks that he’s supposed to have but in this setting it’s local custom he really digs so he can just really enjoy himself and not think twice about how it comes across like putting on a dress.

-

OMG Velma and Daphne talking. Now I KNOW we’re in 2018. In the original cartoon the girls completely disappear from the story for ages while the boys have their first run ins with the ghost, and it was wildly sexist not to even think they would have a subplot. Daphne functionally did nothing in the episode, so even just being a love interest between Fred and Dean’s rivalry is an upgrade, while Velma was badass at the end, but had no inner life or relevance to the story until she could help Scooby directly.

This entire bedroom is a new set for this purpose, therefore. (There’s a painting of an angel on the wall behind Velma)

I’ll see if they pass the bechdel test but I mean, even if they don’t, this is a feminist victory vs the original cartoon :P

-

“The new guys are kind of groovy!”

“Sure, Dean’s alright. But that big lug? What a dummy! Haunted! Like that’s a real thing.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I thought big lugs were kind of your thing.”

*HOW DARE*

-

That’s sooooo close. They neearly talk about ghosts. I’m gonna give Velma half a point for bechdel test passing because she was trying to deflect the conversation to something other than a man, but Daphne, who clearly spends every haunted house bunking with Velma, knows all her secrets and won’t let it go :P

-

(Aw Velma.)

-

Uh, this is not how the guy got abducted in the original cartoon, this is a tropey SPN ghost attack

-

Did they bring the ghosts with them?

-

It glows purple with the evil TV magic so I’m gonna have to conclude yes. Yes, this are the real, actual Scooby Gang, in whatever form of semi-consciousness fictional characters exist in in the actual honest to god established canon TV Land that SPN has had since 5x08, as a legit AU or world within a world that humans have created of authors of millions of little worlds (per Metatron in 9x18) and Sam and Dean have been hurled into their actual path where the actual characters exist going to actual roadside diners in between actual episodes, but their presence and the malicious TV magic that brought them here has twisted the reality of the Scooby verse to SPN verse, and Sam and Dean are the unwitting agents of chaos and murder here via the spell, which is probably following them and set on murdering them, and glad that instead of just stuffed toys, it gets to play with something as in depth as Superdoo.

-

Dean being genre savvy/his scooby doo competence porn is really awesome

-

I mean he’s about to be really wrong but heee I have been enjoying it

-

This dramatic non-side-scrolling running with actual, like, camera angles, is really wigging me out. I feel like I’m not supposed to see this.

-

Also: they created new PJs for Velma and Daphne to wear, because they were not wearing pyjamas at any point in the real episode, so skimpy nightwear is something only we get to see now :P

-

Daphne, nooooooo, you can’t discover the body!!

Sam and Daphne both get blood on their hands…

-

“He’s dead! Like really, actually dead!”

-

Aaaand now that Dean has to accept it’s not as cute and innocent as he thought it was going to be, the man who stopped himself from saying “butt” earlier, gives up and says “son of a bitch!”

-

“Well gang, looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands!”

“Someone’s dead.”

“YEAH Fred.”

He can’t help being upbeat and trying to stick to the script of what he knows!

-

Dean has 100% better chemistry with Fred than Daphne, who is cheerfully disinterested in him, and cheerfully pro Fred with barely seeming to realise Dean thinks he has a chance, let alone giving him one :P Meanwhile he’s sizzling against Fred.

-

They’re all just suddenly dressed… Guess they all realised pants were important for this, and Dean, Velma and Daphne weren’t wearing them :P

-

I love how utterly selfless Dean is about realising real murder = Scooby Doo could die

-

Velma is now quoting Sherlock Holmes/Spock about eliminating the impossible, while logicking that ghosts don’t need money

She’s adorable. She can come back from TV land with them if she wants.

-

UHOH THERE’S A TERRIFYING TRENCHCOATED FIGURE OUTSIDE

DUN DUN DUN

This is the most melodramatic fucking thing ever and I think he’s legit possessed by being in a cartoon

Also, weirdly and PERFECTLY superdoo mirrors his intro in 4x01

-

FRED NO, DON’T HURT HIM

-

Cas with a curtain on his head is the best Cas. We are blessed.

-

“Not today freak!” Dean, no.

CAS! HEY HONEY! I hope you didn’t run the whole way here

-

I LOVE though how Dean got to be the one to climb on top of him to threaten the “monster”

Again. 4x01. What is it? Better attack.

…

never mind i will marry this one

-

Dean holds his hand to help him to his feet. Then Cas… takes his hand…. This will forever be in the gifsets.

*Sam awkwardly patting Cas on the back in the background*

I can’t BELIEVE I have to update my unnecessary touching post with the screencaps of this manoeuvre.

-

“Castiel?! It sounds like a great Italian pizza place!”

Dean is never, ever ever ever letting Cas forget that.

They’re going out for Pizza on their first date.

-

First… official… date

-

Awwww, CAS! Actual, his face, walking through the Bunker Cas!!!!! Like, just infodumping where he had been for anyone who didn’t know why he wasn’t in the open. “I’m back from Syria with fruit from the tree of life!”

This is the 3rd most clunky line on the show now. But I’ll allow it. On the condition he does this any time he comes in with groceries in all fan fic forever.

… Oh no he’s so distressed and technically married. It’s okay, you’re still married to Daphne, technically.

No, not that Daphne.

This is getting very, very complicated.

-

“Sam? —– DEAN, WHY ARE YOU ON TV?”

I wonder if this is what he did in 5x08. Just… found their motel room, and the TV was on.

-

I can’t believe Cas missed Dean complaining about how pretty Fred was while being sucked into the TV.

I hope he drops the fruit from the tree of life on the floor in their room or else that’s gonna require them going back to get the cartoon version to bring back to the real world

… He did and he also brought an entire bag of it, which seems practical but they probably only need 1 for the spell, so what the heck does he plan on doing with the rest?

“Happy birthday Dean, I made you a pie.”

-

Cas made a perfect superhero landing in the cartoon. I’m love him.

-

Velma just… casually eavesdropping on them.

The other way to read Cas’s dialogue is that his method of storytelling is a sort of meta way where he says he came in the Bunker saying this stuff, then the Cas we see on screen saying it is saying it in the way that Cas recounts himself saying it… I wonder if he mentioned the fruit from the tree of life, and she just fixates on the killer stuffed dinosaur.

-

“It’s a book we’re writing… about killer stuffed dinosaurs… It’s called…”  
“the killer stuffed dinosaur. In. Love.”

yeah, this is 100% in character that Cas described his own dialogue and that’s what we saw.

Also. “In love”, Cas? You are certainly having some weirdass stuff about love and marriage going on with you this episode.

-

The Scooby Gang will like anything… they’re so… cheerful… and positive…

-

Why are the only two official hunts Cas has been on, cartoon-based? Is this what he thinks hunting is to Sam n Dean? Is this how their day job reads to him?

-

I’m living for all the exterior shots of Baby and the Mystery Machine hanging out

-

GHOSTLY HANDPRINTS

How much handprint imagery is going on in this episode?? This is like as much as there was in season 11 all at once

-

FRED NO DON’T FIGHT THE GHOST YOU BIG BEAUTIFUL LUG

-

I am loving the classic season 1 terror of a ghost, because this house is full of adorable mystery hunters who are forbidden from dying on Dean’s orders

-

Cas’s entire existence is a blessing

*tosses Shaggy and Scoob aside and dusts off his hands*

-

That’s a lot of ectoplasm. You guys are screwed. Should have crossed over with the cartoon ghostbusters.

-

“Well that’s not good.”

I can’t work out if this is just Fred, or being a cartoon gives you the emotional range of a teaspoon when it comes to gory murder.

-

“Do they always just walk away from dead bodies, or…?”

Stop calling them out, Sam. They know how to do THEIR jobs and you know how to do yours, and in this case your job is actually the one that needs doing.

-

“I think this cartoon…. is haunted.”

A bizarrely fascinating meta commentary on how the story itself has become infested with real ghosts.

Which, FYI, you BROUGHT there.

-

VELMA HAS HER MAGNIFYING GLASS

I LOVE HER

It’s a crime that she’s basically sherlock holmes but is one of the most secondary characters.

-

“We should split up and search the house for clues!”

They have their script, TFW have theirs…

“That’s a plan?”

There needs to be better punctuation for Cas. This punctuation is not deadpan sarcastic enough.

-

“Really Sam? I wouldn’t expect such a big, broad-shouldered fella like you to be as chicken as Shaggy!”

Velma, dear, you sound exactly like Dean snarkily complimenting how lovely Fred’s hair is.

-

Holy shit the Dean staring at Cas bit… Cartoon really fool you to only look at the animated bit, aka Sam talking, but if you ignore the rules you learn since childhood, Dean and Cas just… stare… unmoving… at each other through a whole line of dialogue while Sam is talking.

“Was he always this pretty or is it just how the animation does his hair?”

-

“Great! It will be just the three of us!” Dean, you are being punished for what you said in 2x11. I hope you know this. I am losing all doubt they don’t remember him saying it. Back in season 2 little bright-eyed bisexual you wanted to explore a haunted house with Fred n Daphne, before you were crushed back into performative heterosexuality… Well looky loo what happens in SuperDoo :D

Fred is the bisexual icon we deserve

-

“… unless you’re too scared?” Velma is seriously starting to bat her eyelashes at him and it’s starting to work. Oh my god can we keep her? Sam needs a love interest who will challenge and adore him, and this is perfect.

-

There’s a moose head on the wall in the attic.

“So, I guess this is your first mystery!”

…

“Why do you keep talking about my shoulders?”

WHY DOES DEAN KEEP TALKING ABOUT FRED’S ASCOT?

-

Blushy Velma is adorable.

-

Okay listen they’ve fought one “haunted” mannequin and i would literally die for Sam x Velma

-

Sam’s giving her the speech.

You know, she DOES technically qualify as “someone in the life”

Why don’t you guys just keep the TV and Sam visits her on weekends?

-

Anyway he can’t keep up the pretence of the cartoon, as per the usual rules of him and Dean integrating in a world - where Dean is the tourist and Sam remains firmly and principled-ly himself. He starts telling Velma about monsters and demons (hee) and breaks down the lines that they were performing in, because it irritates him so much to perform, and he believes just telling Velma the truth is a simpler way to keep her safe if she knows what’s out there… And because her innocence of the Supernatural is annoying and depressing for him and she represents a carefree mystery solver he never got to be.

-

“Look, Sam. The simple fact is, monsters are nothing more than crooks in masks, usually unscrupulous real estate developers!”

I feel like this has some meta significance… Not just humans are the real monsters, but the actual monsters in Sam n Dean’s world often are putting on a mask but have “real” needs, working jobs and sometimes even developing real estate (3x02 for example :P)… Often understanding and empathising with why monsters are doing what they’re doing is really how they catch them and defeat them… And Sam is the stereotypically more inclined to empathise with monsters and their motives.

-

“There are way better real estate scams.” Aw, Sam, let the fiction work. Again, just not letting the story tell itself and enjoying it for what it is - Sam picks holes in the premise that 100s of real estate developers would compete for business deals or whatever by using zany ghost antics.

-

Uh that’s more ectoplasm, a clown jack in the box, a stuffed toy scooby doo, and I am officially creeped out :P

-

The ectoplasm sparkles purple again…

Uhoh

“Told you.”

Velma is so determined to not believe in ghosts because her entire character is written this way… Almost everyone they’ve ever saved from ghosts believes better than this with less evidence :P

Christmas lights and fishing line is definitely how to recreate magic. I’ll let Rowena know.

-

“And an ascot wouldn’t hurt.” Look, Dean, she’s literally written to be in love with Fred. It’s like angels. There’s core programming you just can’t mess with. She’s literally Fred-sexual, which is normally something I hate to ascribe even to fictional characters, but this is literally how she’s written and her characterisation isn’t deep enough to go further than just re-describing Fred.

-

Dean spotting the animated book and Fred and Daphne having no clue how to read their surroundings as if they’re in a cartoon. So wonderfully meta. Dean knows the VISUAL LANGUAGE of Scooby Doo because he’s watched every episode a million times. He has meta knowledge as a visitor to their world - stuff the characters can’t comprehend in their reading of their surroundings but Dean has the dramatic irony knowledge of - being able to see the book even when just watching and knowing the animated element of the screen is what they can and will interact with as a kid lends to him knowing how to manipulate his surroundings when they’re investigating in the cartoon. Just as we the viewer know how to spot stuff in their surroundings in the rest of the show that fits the visual language WE learn about the show, that Sam n Dean are oblivious to.

-

Hey, hands off the cartoon characters, Dean.

-

Cas mimicking Shaggy.

I don’t think anyone has adequately explained to him *exactly* what is going on, but he can read the situation on probably a deep metaphysical level. And playing the part… He’s on the team that is terrified and walks around with scared little hands on tip toes, so he’s gonna tippy toe along with them. :’)

I love Cas.

-

He has shit spacial awareness of ghosts though.

-

he POKED it. in the FACE. He POKED THE GHOSTY IN THE FACE.

-

“I’ve never seen a ghost wear such a ridiculous costume.”

His response is 100% curiosity and just standing there with the ghost trying to menace him while he pokes it, but he’s no match for Shaggy’s super cartoon strength.

-

Fuck off Scrappy Doo, no one likes you

-

They’ve run to Daphne and Velma’s room after all the hilarity of the chase scene. Poor TFW got completely sucked into the madness… Weirdly comparable to 13x05 where it was complete ghost hunter competency porn in the asylum right up until Dean made it weird.

Anyway, we get a better look at the angel in the background, that Cas is standing right in front of, and it has a sword and I am honestly wondering if Michael. But what sort of long-term foreshadowing would this be? If we’re around this time last year, then we’ve had 12x12 which means Michael’s name had been dropped, the yellow-eyed ghosts make sense, if the long-term Dabb era game plan was to get us to Apocalypse era redux on Princes of Hell and Michael and Lucifer etc. They can’t foreshadow MUCH because it’s a year in advance, but they can stick to themes they know will be upcoming.

-

JINKIES. Everyone’s being thrown around and I think Fred has been knocked out and WHERE IS SHAGGY?

-

The angel appears to be holding a flower crown

-

Stabbing the ghost with iron doesn’t dissipate it - it makes it leak angry purple spell stuff D:

-

Fred is BLEEDING.

Sorry, I should have said, “Rere’s Raggy?”

-

Cas stands with such a power stance.

-

CAS IS A SUPERHERO WITH A CAPE

Seeing Cas actually, like… move… is super weird. He’s striking so many poses and being all hero-y and normally Misha is like a wall of fuck you that sometimes stabs people.

-

RAGGY

D:

-

“It appears his arm is broken.”

“What the - that’s never - I jumped out of a BIPLANE in a MUSEUM and was FINE”

Raggy is not happy about this change in their universe

-

Cas, HEAL HIM you fuck

A beloved childhood friend is HURT and you’re POUTING ATTRACTIVELY

-

Daphne and Fred look so weird without their scarves but the image of them tied together to hold Shaggy’s arm is adorably Teamwork Goals

-

Oh my god, the close up on Dean with the pretty lashes is a one-off and right as we’re getting a close up on Velma sans-glasses and we can see she doesn’t have the pretty lashes. Dean literally has prettier lashes than anyone but Daphne.

-

“We’ve been hunting real estate developers when we could have been hunting Dracula? MY LIFE IS MEANINGLESS”

look, I love Fred.

-

Omg Shaggy on the high horse though. “WE TOLD YOU EVERY FREAKIN TIME”

-

“Rere Doomed”

-

“The scooby gang doesn’t have breakdowns!”

-

Dean pep talk! The best pep talk!

Awww Sam gives up and admits he likes Scooby Doo too

-

ARM THE LOVABLE INNOCENT MYSTERY HUNTERS

“That’s a Scooby Don’t.”

-

“You guys are amazing!!”  
“Thank you Fred” *Dean visibly puffs up at approval from his crush*

-

… Dean swooore

-

OH NO THE WASHING MACHINE

GUYS NO

NO

-

Cas is creeping again

-

CAS NO

-

JFC did you WATCH this episode DEAN?

-

That was your fault.

-

YOU’RE JUST LEAVING CAS IN THE WASHING MACHINE?

-

Okay good they got him out in time for the confrontation in the COOLEST SALT CIRCLE THEY’VE EVER HAD ON THE SHOW

-

“Eh, creepy ghost kid. You get used to them.”

-

CAS DOING THE PEEK OUT THE DOOR IN A GROUP THING

-

Did Fred just quote lord of the rings? Is that even from the book or just the film, because you won’t see that for like another 30 years or something.

-

Awww Sam letting Velma have the win on the ghosts not being real thing at last :’)

-

Another win for the Scooby Gang! They solved it all! I’m so proud of them :’)

-

Cas is now evesdropping on them and is like “Hmph” when she says there’s no such thing as the supernatural.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t heal Shaggy. They have enough to deal with with ghosts being real.

-

Oh. Wait. He just healed Shaggy. hahahahaha

“It was never really broken after all!”

-

“You’re not so bad.”

Dean, you got your resolution with Fred, leave Daphne alone!

Pfft. I guess that’s one way to end it with Daphne. Let the childhood fantasy go. It was never for you, Dean.

She’s like ??? and runs after Freddy.

-

“I will miss your wise words and your gentle spirits.”

Cas you squishy marshmallow

“Like, we will miss breathing!!”

let them GO

Cartoon Cas is a strange, strange man but I love him

-

“Those shoulders… JINKIES”

Velma walks out taking a victory lap

bahahahahahahaha

-

“Should have known Velma was good to go… it’s always the quiet ones.”

Dean. You fuckhead. Look to your left where Cas is standing. Quietly.

-

Awwww they’re home.

“THAT was the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

-

Dean forgetting Cas is in the room and mentioning something gross he did to twins… 3x01? :P

You can tell he forgot Cas was listening and was saying it for Sam, because he looks at Cas and totally bottles out of saying whatever gross thing he might have said about it in complete and utter shame. You know, the same attitude as the hide the porn moment from 8x10. Can’t look perverted in front of the love interest.tvtropes.com

-

“Sorry, sweetheart.”

Oh Dean, you can get another TV one day :(

Until then, movie night is you and Cas curled up on your bed with a laptop and a DVD of a cowboy movie :’)

-

If you got a sofa none of this would have happened

-

*Cas being very quiet in this scene*

-

ASCOT DEAN!

-

Dean is so mad about that TV

-

HAHAHA they got him on tax evasion. AMAZING.

-

“Velma was right, it was a shady real estate developer after all.”

Sam’s SMILE. It’s more ridiculous than Cartoon Sam’s face

-

“OOOOH HE SAID IT”

*Cas narrows his eyes like… what*

-

“Dean. You’re not a talking dog.”

that is literally the conclusion of 13 years worth of character symbolism about Dean as lil attack dog

it’s… horrifying how this show works, on a symbolic level.

i mean we literally just… broke the curse… of the Weird Dog Episodes. I mean.

meta level

this is

….

i quit.

Counters:

Zoinks I  
Jinkies II  
Jeepers II  
Ruh Roh I

Eeny Weeny Mystery Machineys

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	17. 13x17

*vague muffled noises*

Expectations: got to come down from an all-time great episode but it’s Davy so I’m not worried about a huge drop off, and I’m legitimately intrigued, of all things, to meet Asmodeus written by someone other than Buckleming. Davy in season 12 briefly fooled me with 12x15 that the Crowley and Lucifer subplot might be worth watching, alas to no greater end as no one else wrote it for the rest of the year really. But in any case, he gets the honour of writing Gabriel so much better him to sell me on it than Buckleming :P I am therefore far more prepared to have Gabriel back on these terms and conditions…

-

The MoL recap skipped showing Cas with popcorn and I’m automatically deducting an entire out of ten score. This episode may end up being perfect in every other respect but would only get 9/10

-

They also didn’t show Cas booping Ketch to sleep for no reason other than it being funny. 8/10

-

NOW: “1925”

-

This is super illuminati. Aka what Dean was worried about in 8x13 when they were first snooping around the Bunker… to this point, they never discovered anything worse than racist old men, or the weird British chapter. No signs of SERIOUS cult activity among the Americans, rather than it being a supernatural book club with a heroic purpose.

Leave that poor flapper alone.

-

Er are they literally doing the same spell? Terrified flappers make the WORST interdimensional travellers.

-

Honestly, though, the illuminati MoL aquarian star is super cool in a really spooky way

-

TENTACLE

-

Retroactively makes me wonder about 6x21 and if HP Lovecraft’s friends were MoL and up to some nonsense. Obviously that was purgatory not an AU but it’s all curiosity and who knows anything about all this stuff :P they all probably just want to see monsters, you know. The show’s presentation of Lovecraft definitely made home look like the profile of a MoL they use later when these are a thing.

-

DEAN, LEAVE YOUR BROTHER ALONE. If he’s sleeping on the table he’s overworked and doesn’t need this nonsense :P

Sam… go to bed.

Since their mom is still in an AU I’m taking over

-

Considering Dean has coffee he probably came in here with coffee, saw Sam like that, and went to get post it notes. If Sam was alert he’d be questioning that Dean’s coffee was already on the table when Dean is pretending to just come into the room.

-

Oh no re: 6x21 - Dean called it Kryptonite.

-

How are there always more rooms in the Bunker? … I have like 9 messages from Trisscar I haven’t been looking at but suddenly I can guess :P

It appears to be opposite 7d, meaning this may be 7c, and a boring archive room rather than room 7b, which is the smaller archive room with a DUNGEON behind it

-

Dean is great in the research montage

Also that implies Sam had the post it notes the entire day, which given the half life of post it note glue is stretching credibility :P

-

Uh… They need to be more careful about just assuming random glowing rocks people dig up in the holy land are definitely the thing they are looking for.

I mean the cold open seems to imply it genuinely IS, but that’s no excuse for being like glowing rock + glowing rock = success

-

Jinkies!

-

*sexy driving montage*

-

Okay this place is both spooky AND unlocked. Maybe because Jensen doesn’t have another flip over a fence in him, but it’s also pretty ominous about the useage of this place.

I love how in the modern age you just put the coordinates of your creepy destination into your phone and follow it and then get out at the first abandoned building dead on the spot and be like welp google told us to go get murdered by cultists here so

-

“Ask questions get answers” Are you not going to ask about the EYE?

That’s a disturbing lack of concern for something essentially thematically “alter the sigil alter the spell” - the MoL vs the weird cultist chapter which clearly has a difference from the one they’re used to because of the different symbol. Whatever level the MoL Sam and Dean know about, knew in turn about these guys, whether they disowned or quietly let them get on with it or what… this is not meant to mean the same as just casually finding another home base…

-

Just dropping in for a cup of tea and a seal of solomon

-

Uhoh the books all over the floor don’t bode well

-

“Looks familiar, huh?”

*Sam finally spots an eyeball aquarian star* “Except for that”

you don’t say

-

“Great. More books.”

“You love books.”

Honestly Dean kinda does and half of this goofing off from earlier was performative… He DOES find some types of research super boring but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t read for fun and also retain information well from books and hit the books when necessary.

Sam’s just much more driven right now, meaning that Dean’s being played off in contrast as mostly normal. Aka not wildly driven to do the reading himself, which in turn isn’t just a usual character trait but shows how desperately Sam’s at it.

-

uhoh those photos look like kidnappable flapper research

-

Sandy Porter :D

I hope that’s supposed to say “age: 23” but I can’t unread it as “eyes: 23” and the handwriting is weird.

-

SOLOMON 1917

I think we have found the thing… now the question is did this weird cult appear BECAUSE of the seal or was it they were already weird and they ended up bagging it for their experiments?

Their letter header already has the aquarian eye…

-

Sam/Jared casually breaking everything on the shelf

why did they leave that take in

-

Oh I guess he had to make noises to make Sandy start yelling for help

(I assume it’s her or something that LOOKS like her)

-

I love Dean’s photographic memory. And when we get flashes of him remembering stuff on screen like this

Sam’s like What the Fuck

-

Aha it’s Ketchmodeus time

Arthmodeus?

-

I love how Sam n Dean are wearing grey and they plop Dean’s bi plaid over Sandy’s grey flapper dress.

(She’s called Sandy with blonde hair and Mary’s middle name is Sandra)

-

Query: where WAS Dean keeping the plaid, or did he go up first, get a rope and a shirt and then we skipped all the stuff where they get a lil person who can’t just hop up and reach the manhole cover again out of the hole in the ground :P

-

She’s also skipped ahead in time from being a flapper and is now a millenial, possibly possessed by an Elder God hence the long life etc :P But she and Mary share the backstory in a way of being transported out of their right time

-

Is Ketch reading one of Crowley’s old books from when he was raising Amara? Pfft. It’s not uncle hoppity but it is obviously for a child, and is a way of demeaning him… He’s reading it probably out of both boredom and spite… :P

-

… But the demons are apparently too fussed about cat videos to pay attention to him…

wha t is this episode

-

I have to admit at some undisclosed point I went to yoga, fell asleep on the floor in a rec hall and have since eaten my weight in chocolate avacado cake and coffee, so I am fairly addled :P

-

Oh, yep, Asmodeus is beefing himself up with angel juice, who EVER would have guessed it

it also reads like an addiction, and as this was introduced in season 9 around the time of Crowley’s demon blood addiction and Dean with the Mark and Cas eating grace, it’s almost surprising the needle was only ever implied to be for extraction.

But now we have Lucifer eating grace, and Asmodeus injecting it - the question is if he’s addicted to it or not.

I’d assume as well if this was planned from the start, his colonel sanders look might also have been, social commentary aside, because the wanted a demon dressed all in white and looking clean and shiny like an angel

-

*demon minion comes blundering in a minute late* “I tried to stop him!”

This is absolutely 100%, no, 1000% vagueblogging Buckleming and how idiotic the Hell plot is and I am living for it

-

Poor squeaky Gabriel

-

They take Sandy to the most retro diner they can find… Inside, we meet patrons and staff with names immediately, before the Winchesters enter… The apparent owner, Joanne, amused by “Buck and Amy”, one of her staff and a teenage boy, then says she’d hit it with Buck if Amy won’t, which is SUPER creepy… Her cook apparently doesn’t speak English or speak at all, so she feels free to say horrible things in front of him

Buck looks vaguely Jack-like just because he’s a teenage boy with floppy hair

-

They really are easing her in slow with the modern age, this diner is decrepit, but just this many electric lights is enough for now >.>

Plus, they arrived in a car from the 60s

-

And she’s messing with an ancient jukebox

-

This is adorable

-

i mean there’s some high level creepiness in the diner, which I assume is Still Too Local and they ought to have crossed state lines…

I wonder at this point if their immediate vicinity to Asmodeus’s lair is relevant. They’d know from Cas now that he’s still using it. I mean, do you detour in your road trip to an ancient MoL bunker because you know the demon currently running Hell is camped out just down the road?

-

They’re getting Sandy the meatloaf… Pretty sure that was what Mary said she got from the Piggly Wiggly in 12x02

-

Oh great, people who tattoo the aquarian eye on their arms. “Marco”’s name is in quotation marks.

HE CAN SPEAK

-

“Wait, these men of letters were the ones who… chained you down there?” Sam, you KNOW the MoL aren’t perfect… are you really going to struggle with this? :P She was in THEIR secret Bunker chained up in the secret bunker’s secret basement, surrounded by corrupted Aquarian stars. It’s like 99% likely this was an inside job, especially as it’s the longest pay off for a character defamation fraud ever otherwise :P

-

More tentacles!

-

Okay, look, you guys need Mary back and on your side because I swear to god if she goes into the bathroom and gets kidnapped because you’re an all dude team then I’m going to scream.

you NEED women to support women because sometimes we really do go to the bathroom in a pack to avoid being kidnapped by cultists who want to feed us to tentacle monsters from another dimension

-

Oh no, they’re all just being poisoned so they can be ritually murdered later

-

Aw “pet angel” again. Gabriel is overhearing this intel, so he knows the Winchesters are alive, doing shit, and Cas is still alive and doing shit with them… All good basic intel you should probably not let the one angel who cared about them in season TWO know. I mean, Azazel and Gabriel are the ONLY players who cared about them back when the status quo of the world was still in balance - from season 3 onwards everyone wanted a piece of Sam, and Dean’s soul was rapidly heading towards breaking the first seal so everyone now had a stake in them. But Gabriel? He’s a total hipster about bothering the Winchesters when they were wee little babby hunters to see if they were up to the task… and found they were.

Now he’s back in canon I’m going to be evaluating him as carefully as I can with such a retconned and fandom beloved and fanon-bedecked character, and I think in our advantage for having him back, he’s in a state we’ve never seen him before… genuinely in trouble :P

-

And Gabriel peers curiously through the bars as Asmodeus starts explaining their plans

-

“It’s time we talk about us” please stop trying to make Ketchmodeus happen

-

A shot of them from a million miles away, a million miles between them, sliced off by a pillar. Ketch standing in the light. Asmodeus in the dark with yellow candles around him.

I am pretty sure this room is 10000x more candle-y than before.

When I was doing my rewatch of the early seasons a few summers ago I was so amused by the bajillion candles, a trend which died out with the colour format of the show changing, and any time a character shows up who needs a billion candles (e.g. Abaddon in 9x02) I get disproportionately excited that they *understand* the show :P

In this case, Asmodeus really needs all the links back to the start he can get, because he’s a new, weak demon, one specifically called out in 13x12 of being the weakest of Lucifer’s creations, and here shown juicing up on poor Gabriel, all a meta commentary on him being a rubbish character inserted as the last of the retconned princes of hell, his literal strength as a character weak and flimsy when it comes to caring about him, because after all the show has been through, retroactively adding ancient powers is a serious problem about “where were they before?” and so many of them need to have been lost, disinterested, locked away, buried and hidden and forgotten. In Asmodeus’s case, possibly just looked over and neglected, and he’s been having a pissy sulk about not being invited to the apocalypse for the last 10 years, since we know nothing about where he was before, but he’s at least seemed to have his liberty and he waited out every single major player more powerful than him, and is appearing as a desescalation of a threat as a big bad so ridiculous the show is mocking him for being comically weedy, petty and out of touch or useless, or plain stupid. Even *Buckleming* seem aware he’s an idiot at times.

-

And now Perez is writing this fucker and I actually have to character profile him >.>

-

Anyway Ketch is talking about their relationship, Asmodeus is trying to escalate his control over Ketch to “owning” him and pushing his luck really - Ketch being humiliated with the kid’s book is a power play but Asmodeus really sucks at power plays and plans and all round… doing things…

-

I love watching Ketch get beaten up even if it is Asmodeus

Ah well

-

Was Asmodeus almost scary?

-

I mean, I suppose if we were supposed to care about Ketch a bit

After season 12 it’s more like… Can we just have everyone beat him up once?

-

Dean is also stuck on the MoL being tweed wearing and harmless

And Sam avoiding carbohydrates… like… at least he ordered a couple of plates of food but he is a Big Guy, he needs to eat more than this!!

In some ways it reflects their endgame, e.g. Dean is still self-destructing and you could imagine either sticking a middle finger to any higher purpose supposed to affect him, or else bitter that he is never allowed off the ride… away from that, just the belief that it’s winning to be killed by food rather than a monster. And he’s been killed on the job enough to know the difference.

Sam, keeping himself sharp, suppoesdly (even if he is falling asleep on the table) and keepnig healthy long term, which may or may not be to some eventual endgame, that he plans on winning

-

I swear if anything skeezy happens to Buck…

-

Oh good, he’s just noticed the cultists first while the professional hunters are busy eating… Maybe we all just get locked in here or something

-

Aaaand Sam’s asleep on the table again. This is why you carb load

-

I guess no one’s sticking post it notes on him this time

ALSO if it’s that fast acting and the service is so slow here, you have a problem :P

-

The cultists’ robes are similar colour to the wait staff uniform

-

I love the new fight coordinator

-

Cmon Sam, you only had one bite

-

Whoops he’s being kidnapped

where is Sandy???

-

Nice one, eldritch flapper! :D :D

-

She has the “i just killed someone” look so I figure that whatever the monster did to her, she’s not totally lost to it

-

Are they just keeping Sam as a hostage exchange? They’re still just surrounding the diner…

-

At least Dean knows how to make a weapon out of anything

-

oh dear sweet cinnamon roll “we have to call the police!”

… Yep, one of the cultists is part of the local police. At which point me, having written a novel with red-robed cultists running around a town sacrificing girls and secretly being local authority figures is like… welp…

-

Aw, Dean, don’t go charging after Sam. He already was like no don’t go to the creepy bunker alone.

At least weigh your options and get a lay of the land first :/

-

I mean I would assume they want Sandy in exchange which means not happening, but…

-

Yep, they want the monster/god

Sandy is not very much of either :(

-

“our family was men of letters”  
“so was ours…”  
“kinda”

Okay so they want a clean start with this God, from another dimension, which is exactly what Michael wants, and it’s currently in the Mary mirror.

Oh boy

-

“oh boy” indeed, it ate everyone and they bound it again, but it’s still inside Sandy… Glowy purple eyes which is pretty ominous. She’s also a Rowena mirror in a sense, including the monster, and there would be an interesting meta after this probably, when it’s all said and done, to compare the scale of bound, hungry women

in this case, they accidentally made a devouring mother goddess which is more like… Amara… But it wants a mate

-

Aaaand the MoL banned all the members who were involved in this nonsense. See, you guys literally have the box of members who were banned… Bit of digging on the history of this chapter house and it would be like, dude, a dozen of these guys were banned for SUMMONING AN ELDRITCH MONSTROSITY

-

Ow, wow, Asmodeus has 4 vials of archangel grace knocking around… he seems to really have an issue here if he needs that much, constantly

menas stealing Gabriel from him will dry him out quickly, but also motivate him to get him back, unlike how he’s just like pfft whatever about losing Cas and Lucifer

-

He and Ketch are getting deep and philosophical… First of all, I am a little concerned that Asmodeus is OOC for not having the depth of thought of a teaspoon, and very little will get me interested in their inner lives in any case because I refuse to let Ketch be made sympathetic on the grounds that he’s a dick and I’m allowed to draw a line.

Anyway they’re having a conversation about a MoL code which means these stories sort of metaphorically overlap and that’s weird and I’m not certain how to handle thematic balance with them because we’re actually exploring what it means to be a legacy here, and all the different toxic threads that each family is upholding etc

Fortunately Asmodeus keeps calling Ketch “boy” so the squicky Ketchmodeus I fear is just enough to keep me on edge through this scene :P

(to be clear, I don’t fear it in the show so much as fearing that fandom will Kylux latch onto it and everyone will be shipping the shit out of it to an intolerable level, despite the aforementioned emotional ranges of teaspoons for these boring racist-coded white dudes)

But there’s some blah about redeeming Ketch which is making me very nervous they’re going to try

The was Asmodeus talks about Ketch belonging to him makes me wonder that whatever deal they struck to get into this partnership, there’s some magical connection, more than just this emotional weakness that Asmodeus is talking about exploiting. Mostly because one is nuanced and one will be appropriate for Buckleming to play with, should they choose to acknowledge another writer’s continuity.

(And I think half the reason Dabb’s banished them to a separate plot is that they disrespect others’ attempts to write the story that in leiu of collaboration, he’s stuck them over here to do their own thing where they can’t mess anything up…)

-

oh no don’t send Buck out there with a kitchen knife

What is Dean doing? Amy and Joanne can’t be in control of this situation??

-

That sounds very un-feminist of me but they did just send Buck out with a tiny weeny knife, like, not even a steak knife

-

Awhooops, the more the other MoL cultists talk, the more they sound like they’re just managing a mistake their grandfather made, and Sam and Dean blundered into it as the bad guys, inadvertently “rescuing” Sandy (WHO I STILL LIKE) in their own quest for personal gain. Aka selfish actions beget consequences

-

Oh, that’s a lot of dead cultists.

Oh, Sandy no don’t eat Buck

RIP Buck

-

Dean is still distracted trying to do whatever to save Sam, and while stockpiling weaponry has missed both Sandy slipping away AND Joanne and Amy sending Buck out to get eaten

-

AAAH LEAVE DEAN ALONE

-

Also it’s so unsettling having a monster wandering around in one of his most iconic shirts… I’ll have to worry about that later but yikes. The imagery is unsettling to say the least. It’s a really memorable one.

-

DRAMATIC EYE CONTACT between Ketch and Gabriel

Trying not to think about how that looked weirdly like the Claire Kaia intro eye contact

To be fair they’ve looked at each other a bunch and whatever Ketch thinks of Gabriel, they’ve had time to form their opinions of each other

He presents his undamaged side of his face to Gabriel while realising he has to free him

-

This is a hilarious rescue. Ketch isn’t good at being a convincing good guy and Gabriel is freaked the heck out

-

Understandably, I wouldn’t go with Ketch

-

Although idk maybe Gabriel is too traumatised to notice that Ketch was having a personal revelation of sorts

-

I am so disappointed that “if I had half your power” line didn’t lead to Ketch being like “… but Asmodeus does” and grabbing the spare vials from the box he was keeping it all in. Maybe he took it with him

should have been a seduce the bad guy to steal the vials while he sleeps thing

-

… oh shit, they got me

-

Okay, the archangel blade works on other things… it’s clearly potent

-

Sam nearly got frying panned by creepy Joanne

-

Meanwhile also in much older women going for young lads (proportionately), Dean has been picked as ideal mate material, in a season where he’s already been whammied with a love spell, and just last episode Cas got married.

How comes all this imagery keeps hittnig them?

I ask the void

when today the void is represented by Eldritch Flapper Sandy from the void.

-

Okay, I don’t know how to spell her eldritch name, but “star of madness ravager of galaxies mother of faceless hordes” is hecka cool

I’m sad that Sandy is dead but this eldritch thingy is still sorta badass

-

Mittens just told me this is set the same place as the open of 6x21, the same place HP Lovecraft is from, so that confirms my musings at the top of this :D I am delighted

-

She just misses her love from another universe.

“It’s like a hallmark movie… with tentacles!”

that is not a deal breaker for Dean, I think

Anyway. Dean being confronted with this sweet love story. Now he will be the host to an epic, galaxy-crushing romance! Awww!!

-

She’s gonna lay eggs in him though

-

i hope that’s a dealbreaker

-

Also the whole… possession threat… when we’ve had spoilers jensen’s playing something else

I assume not this guy

-

WHERE DID THE MOL GET THIS ANGEL GRACE BTW?

I feel like this has to be Gabriel again unless Raphael or Michael fucked up at some point and we’re gonna find out later, just from the fact only one of them wasn’t bound for most of human history or in Heaven, but actually slumming it on earth

-

We know literally nothing of Gabriel’s history except that he dated Kali so there’s that

-

Okay the tentacles are a deal breaker, Dean’s grossed out

-

UHOH SPACE TENTACLES

-

Bye bye eldritch flapper… you were fun

-

(RIP Sandy)

Guess they will go back to ravaging stars together in the darkness

-

ALSO I really hope there’s a way to STEER THIS FUCKING SPELL

-

elizabethrobertajones  
Huh. Tentacles are the dealbreaker for Dean  
who knew  
after 13 years there’s something weird and kinky he isn’t at least curious about :P

elizabethrobertajones  
Oh wait  
never mind  
“not that there’s anything wrong with that”  
he is a consentacles guy

mittensmorgul  
BAHAHAHAHA

mittensmorgul  
He’s not gonna kink shame

-

Also Dean is wondering if there’s a way to steer the spell as well

-

Okay so they actually know how to work it - you can only go to AUs you already have a part of, and a time limit which will be for drama when they finally open this thing…

-

Do they have to bring this back to them afterwards? I hope so :P

-

Dean coming down the stairs joking about nearly being an interdimensional booty call after collecting one of the spell ingredients directly mirrors Cas coming down the stairs yelling about how he had to get married to get one of the OTHER ingredients.

-

I LOVE their Ketch reaction

-

Okay so Gabriel has said nothing all episode, and I assume Ketch is about to produce him, so the question is… how does Gabriel introduce himself? What’s the play? These are the questions I am most curious about because this episode has been defining a lot of characterisation for the previously woefully undercharacterised Asmodeus, fleshing out WTF is Ketch’s deal right now, and now Davy has the abilityto set the course (hopefully) for Gabriel.

We have 5 minutes to go

-

Oh hey he’s still bloody and has his mouth sewn

he’s just… hauling Gabriel into a chair

Like you do get how this looks suspicious, mate

-

And Sam and Dean are like uuuuh he’s dead so wtf

Which is my reaction too so get to the backstory snap snap

-

Gabriel’s eyes are so panicky I’m worried he’s gonna be half-mad

-

Oh dear, “we need his grace” and Gabriel is like FUCK THAT SHIT YOU’RE NOT EVEN SAVING ME AND IF I’M ACTUAL ME AND NOT AN AU VERSION I FUCKING DIED FOR YOU ASSCLOWNS WHAT THE FUCK. UNSEW MY MOUTH AND LET ME HAVE A BATH

well “HMMM!!! HMM!!!!!!!!! !!!!!”

But I can read subtext

-

Ketch is just giving them EVERYTHING

they don’t even know what that blade IS

-

Hey, gabriel, just smash your forehead on the grace vial and eat the grace

it’s not dignified but who cares :P

-

Ketch came to the “only safe place he knew” aka a MoL bunker, which, after all, is very very safe. He has to bargain with Sam and Dean, knowing their spell, because “i saved this random archangel I found” isn’t probably convincing enough on its own???

-

LOL “Dibs on the top bunk?”

“no”

“Deal”

Dean… sweetie… you do remember all your subtext with Ketch last year? You know you can’t just agree to him taking the top bunk like that?

You’re even negotiating either side of the war table again

ALSO WHY IS EVERYONE GETTING KETCH SHIPPING STUFF TODAY? UNSUBSCRIBE

-

And Dean will let pretty much ANYTHING happen to get Mary and Jack back

-

the question is, Cas must be at the farmer’s market or something all episode because he wasn’t there when they were researching and he wasn’t there to stop Ketch coming in, so… where is he?

Anyway Dean is speaking on his behalf re: getting Jack back

Sam seems to want to do this on their own and Dean is making compromises again to get what they need

-

So, uh, Gabriel?

-

Aw, the Sastiel shippers will be happy, Sam was the one who ended up freeing his mouth, which is probably symbolic regardless, re: giving the Trickster back his main weapon

-

Omg Dean is ready to go before Gabriel says a word. Dean. Chill. Cas isn’t even HERE.

And that makes me feel like whatever Gabriel has to say to break his long silence is even more important that Dean interrupted it (it’s gonna not be, now, isn’t it?)

-

“Shouldn’t we wait?”

“Why?”

CAS YOU FUCKHEAD

“We have everything we need, everything else is just burning daylight”

Dean is again trying to leave Sam behind to manage things, and go in and do it alone. Dude, you literally nearly had eggs laid in you by an interdimensional flapper, you need to think about this.

-

LOL Ketch wants to go with them because it’s safer than staying here being hunted by Asmodeus

I mean fair enough, and he’s scarily competent

-

But it’s making it look to Sam like Dean would rather have Ketch around than Sam???

-

Also WHERE IS CAS?

-

“I don’t care if he dies. I’m sort of rooting for it.”

-

Crack episode next where because Dean has interdimensionally travelled before, he ends back up in French Mistake Verse where he’s Jensen and Ketch is DHJ (again? see also: 13x07 notes) and they have to get back before they can do the dramatic stuff

-

Anyway Dean is doing the sacrificial play, Sam watches his cholesterol so he has to stay on earth

-

I can’t believe they’re just opening a portal in the library and for 24 hours there’s just a glowy back and forth hole there

-

But of course, as long as Dean finds Jack, the time limit doesn’t matter

-

I can’t believe Ketch is his BFF for the rest of the season

-

I can’t believe Gabriel didn’t SAY anything

What is he going to SAY next? I WANT TO KNOW

I am unbelievably frustrated, because now it passes it on to Buckleming again, and for all I know Davy thinks the whole Gabriel thing is silly, or is nervous of writing the iconic character so he just shoves it all off on them to break canon as they please and he gets something suitably dramatic and tension building and intentionally frustrating out of it but at the end of the day he doesn’t have to directly ENGAGE with the Gabriel is back story, and it’s all gonna be Bucklemninged next week

Aurgh.

-

Auuuurgh.


	18. 13x18

Hi sorry I’m late I was knitting a very long scarf in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere for a week :D

 

I just got home, I have tea, and I guess I am doing this

FYI I am closer in relation to a slime jelly than a human being right now

my expectations from 3 days ago were optimistically that this plays into Buckleming’s strong spots and with proper care and management perhaps a decent-ish episode could be wrangled out of them if we make the allowance we’re non-negotiably watching one of their episodes to start with…

-

That was the shortest recap Buckleming have probably ever had and it speaks to one of the strengths of this season in a way: the main problems were set in 12x23 and all they need to do is find a way to un-do them and have been making on and off progress all season. With Wayward Sisters and Scoobynatural we had to put a few brakes on it but for the sake of really entertaining side projects, and on the other side of Scoobynatural we can supposedly coast to the end. And so, we get the last spell ingredients in the very next episode and off we go, and what’s left is the set up going into this, of a relatively pared down, personal story and like season 8 almost entirely motivated by what Sam and Dean WANT to do and what they are willing to do to achieve that, rather than by having some urgent problem they tangle with on and off.

I hope that the last run of episodes to the end can play out in whatever way it likes, because right now there is very little nonsense from this season that actually matters towards the main plot that isn’t directly in play…

though the recap didn’t mention Michael or Lucifer and we’d be so lucky if Buckleming didn’t write them :P

-

they didn’t use the apocalypse AU set but went for an outdoors version of the world… Nuclear winter maybe?? It seems like the angels and demons have a specific battlefield and in 13x14 we saw the woods where Bobby had a camp… I think this world might be in a terrible state but the natural world at least might be untouched, where it didn’t have too much human influence… Who knows.

Have to explain the Vancouver snow somehow anyways :P

-

Ketch is still beat up looking from his fight with Asmodeus although I don’t even want to match his injury level now vs what was supposedly a few hours ago at most where Asmodeus was kicking the snot out of him in a rib-breaking sort of way. The light here also has made Dean look exceptionally attractive even by his standards.

In any case Ketch is wavering along a fine line of am i here to steal jack for power or save Mary because I still have a confusing boner for her in my heart or am I just here to save myself and be a dick… the usual kind of thing. I am assuming they’re gonna play at least a degree of redemption with him but it makes it interesting in reverse to Jack that it teases he may go dark but he’s ultimately a sweetie… Ketch is a dick through and through but they can tease the different paths he might take. From Buckleming’s POV, redeeming him before he inevitably will be killed off again might be a sense of completing his story. I remain grumbly and annoyed he’s back at all, and there are some boringly predictable paths he may take so I kind of hope he doesn’t, or that the final writing of him falls to some other writer.

Still. This may or may not be a first chance to kill him off and “justify” bringing him back…

-

“She will kill you… again.”

-

Uhoh, angels. I feel like we might be about to meet a surprise face here… i suppose among either the angels or the humans, because any one of these angels could be a named character from seasons 4-12 brought back on a whim - including up to AU!Cas doing his job. And then the humans have their heads in bags

-

well it’s not the first 2 humans

-

oh look the smaller human with the long red hair was the small human with the long red hair.

Welp.

Look, this literally does not erase a single thing that they did in 10x21 and they can NOT buy that back, but at the same time I am glad on a wider level to see her again. I wish it was not Buckleming because I just can’t trust them to be doing this for any reason other than people were angry and they are throwing peanuts at us and I have 0 expectation they’ll have a progressive agenda or write Charlie particularly interestingly or well.

But if it puts her back into the story and she doesn’t die…

I should ask Mittens that actually :P

-

Okay, Mittens confirms I do not have to watch her die again.

-

Anyway. I doubt lessons are really learned on their end in their specific minds, which is all I actually want. I mean, Charlie could stay dead if we got a “we’re sorry and we finally understand the problem and we were dicks but we’ll try better” from Buckleming, and I feel like this is just literally beyond their capability with what we know about them vs fan interaction, and I doubt Dabb could twist their arms on that and have anything meaningful sink in. And so I will accept surface level that it’s nice to see her again in some form but I don’t have to like or forgive BL for doing this, and I can fully mistrust their motives, but like… whatever

-

Mary and Charlie have met, which means me writing shippy fic about them once upon a time kinda pays off.

I mean, that also implies she’s a friend of Bobby’s which is kinda sad because they only crossed paths in 7x20 and he broke her arm.

-

Also wait, as well, Buckleming brought back AU!Kevin, another character they killed and was really crappy because boo killing off the show’s meagre representation and especially more meagre representation among main-ish secondary characters (i.e. anyone who has at least 2-3 episodes, on this show :P)

In that case it was a LOT more like they were doing it because it was a part of the plot, as with Benny, but Charlie was wildly egregious, and Eileen just plain infuriating and recent enough it felt clear that they had NOT learned their lesson and really had no intention of doing so. Bringing back both Charlie and Kevin means, honestly, that I can practically see the peanuts they’re hurling at us with the intention of shutting us up.

-

Anyway yay Cas n Sam hang out times

-

“And Misha Collins” flashes up on the screen, superimposed over Cas.

my lizard brain: “Oh good, Cas is in this episode”

-

i tired

-

At this point, Cas and Sam bickering over Dean as siblings and brothers in law is just… so completely commonplace it slips my mind to comment on it, whereas once upon a time I would have been wildly excited just to see it, the fact of their dynamic is deliciously cemented, and I’m just happy they’re hanging out now :P

-

I still think Sam might have had better luck reminding Gabriel of the FUN things he did to them rather than the heroic tragic supposed death which was really just, well… whatever it was, if this is the real Gabriel

-

Why do I feel like Sam giving him his grace is a bad idea?

Also… why has he got it on a bandana in a serving dish? Is this just because it’s kinda vaguely funny, or because it was making a low whistling noise the entire time and he covered it up because it was starting to set his teeth on edge? I mean, like… what is going on here… I’m just using the cues they give us :P

-

Let the choo choo in

Cas learned a lot about how to handle infants when he was reading up on what to do about raising Jack. It’s almost sad he doesn’t have a baby to mess around with. I just spent a week with a baby and spent most of it trying to make him say “Marmoset” as his first word.

It’s also wildly distracting in a hilarious way from wondering WHY Gabriel is so scared of supposedly his own grace. Maybe being what he once was, or becoming something he doesn’t want to be.

Cas did the exact same thing when Crowley was trying to make him eat Adina’s grace, although in that case Crowley was like omg shut up I already killed her, and you need to go save Dean for the both of us so just do it and die later, asshole, and Cas opened up with the right motivation. Choo choo.

-

Anyway you would freaking think SAMUEL AND CASTIEL WINCHESTER of all people would NOT try and force a foreign powerful substance into someone else’s mouth when they didn’t seem to want it

-

Jo!! Hey babe, how’s running Heaven going?

Well, she has to manage this dumbass so not well, apparently. There’s presumably only so much she can get out of it when he just wants to play solitaire or “strip poker” with her… (playing with himself vs playing with someone else… is it a metaphor for him just sitting in his room jerking it while she does all the work? :P) but anyways… i love the image of his stupid pointy throne like hurr blurr look at me I run heaven and she’s got a practical comfy chair next to it to sit and like… actually run heaven :P

Her “out” sounds like she was definitely off doing whatever she could, and both of them are reading/pretending the other was doing nothing, while Lucifer was BLATANTLY doing nothing and has no interest in doing it, while she needs the symbol of being attached to him to get what SHE needs, aka actual power and ruling Heaven, and clearly has run into a problem she can’t deal with, without having Lucifer standing next to her.

You know, like how they say to bring a man when you go car shopping because you’ll get a better deal and not get ripped off

-

mittensmorgul  
side note: EVEN HEAVEN’S COLDEST ROOM HAS A SOFA BUT NOT THE DEAN CAVE  
#MadAboutIt

elizabethrobertajones  
You know that was the very next thing I was going to type

-

Lucifer uses Dumas to neg Jo about how she should be happy to be his “first lady” of Heaven, focusing on the me me me me side of the problem, grumbling about their relationship and how she’s nagging him as a way of her showing disrespect etc

In this case I think Buckleming MAY be hitting the right note, maybe even on the side of too heavily, of Lucifer as the useless entitled male and Jo as the smart competent woman with her shit together… I mean, to the point where I’m ASSUMING we’re on Jo’s side but it might be one of those things where they literally do think it’s funny to make her nag lucifer and they’re on his side but I’m so wildly feminist compared to them that I literally can not read this scene from any side but rooting for her first, Dumas second, literally any other angel who  might walk through the door third, and finally and firmly last, Lucifer

I mean, Lucifer is literally draining Jo for power and is presumably at this point completely dependant on her since they may be doing a drug metaphor again, especially an implication that angel grace is addictive, re: Asmodeus (and what a nice throwback to Cas and how strong he was to resist it with all his heart when it was destroying him but also to say how TOXIC being an angel really is, perhaps also re: where we’re going with Gabriel)… And yet he still claims Dumas rules in his favour when she answers neutrally, showing him choosing to make a wilfully wrong interpretation to back up what he wants to see. Aka this is not a metaphor for anyone in power right now and throwing around the word “first lady” in this scene means nothing? :P

-

Dumas tries to remind Lucifer that he said he could make angels and he’s like no go away and get Jack.. reeeally starting to doubt that he can do it

-

lol “your father created. you inherited”

-

Sister Jo is amazing and also I think I witnessed Buckleming shitting on Trump for a whole scene and I’m actually kind of amazed and horrified we agree on an extremely broad and obvious political issue

-

Asmodeus has those balls you spin around to strengthen your hand… on the other hand hehe he’s playing with balls

we’re going from the all-white heaven throne room with the asshole devil sitting on it, to the dark hell throne room with the all-white angel grace addicted demon sitting on it. This is actually a reasonably good scene transition and in general so far this episode has been weirdly well paced to the 9 minute mark at least, with a well-placed title card reveal, a how are sam n cas scene after and then the 2 sides of thrones one after the other, showing how the seats of power are doing right now…

not sure how long this LASTS but good editing may one day save us from the Buckleming nonsense if someone would just be sterner with it. There’s so much in their episodes I could chop out…

-

Also, Asmodeus is getting more interesting, twitchy and fidgeting now he’s in withdrawal, and well aware that the grace was the only thing making him remotely a power player.

-

lol @ dean letting branches hit Ketch as they go

in fact I’m headcanoning that he turned around and noticed him missing because he didn’t hear the satisfying “thwap” of another thorn hitting him in the face and had to look to see what happened

-

oh, nothing dramatic, just Ketch being a drama queen. Anyway, it was more of an incentive to start that argument than them just getting into it at random while walking so… kudos for introducing a scene with more than “we are talking about this now because we are”

Dean leads with that they’re looking for Charlie because she’s seen Mary, then she’s seen Jack, and “we need her” - a clear practical motivation. Ketch counters that there is a different, personal reason to want her saved. A use your words correctly moment.

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Aaand now Dean’s been shot by a slaver… the AU is fun

-

Oh, this is a different bedroom set with no stairs, probably so they could ruin it by painting all over it. I wonder if Gabriel manifested this, because idk if they’d have left him the resources :P

-

“It’s his story, starting with his death” - a nice person translated some of it and found it WAS Bible verses relating to Gabriel, but the question is that this is going to tell us something different. The set people write a different story than the script, especially as there’s no bible verse for 5x18 :P

-

Oh good, so even if Gabriel isn’t speaking, we’re getting his words, in a way, including with snark about how Lucifer has half his brains, which in 5x18 seemed debatable that he might be whiny but did actually have a big old apocalypse going, but by now with Lucifer reduced to rubble in terms of being actually frightening, effective, or driven, all the archangels are diminished one way or another, including Gabriel himself. But his words betray the personality underneath lives on and is around and maybe retrievable, as there is snark within this writing, even if outwardly, Gabriel is a mess.

I mean.

I type this as someone who is so tired I can’t speak without getting every sentence backwards and I have half-lidded eyes, am utterly depleted to the point I can barely walk, but inwardly, typey typey chatty chatty and I can still get much more advanced words out if I don’t have to move anything other than my fingers and no running the words through the mouth. I am essentially borderline catatonic yet inwardly full of words and snark :P

-

(I just travelled like 150 miles today after a week of touristing and these things don’t stack well with chronic fatigue)

-

Also to get this read, we need lots of close ups of Cas’s hands touchy touchy… I like this. Cas likes to touchy touchy and we get to see close ups of his hands. Everyone wins

-

and by everyone i mean don’t imagine cas reading dean’s face like this

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“Gabriel was gone, and suddenly, I was free - no obligation to God, or Heaven, or mankind.”

(“And so I did what anyone would do. I moved to Monte Carlo and shacked up with pornstars.”)

The first line - epic. The second… lol. Gabriel’s tastes have been compared to Dean’s since we met the Trickster - they even bonded a lil over his sense of humour and the babes he conjured for Dean in the final confrontation. I was musing on some reverse verse art and realised angel!Dean written with no hang ups would be remarkably like fanon!Gabe, which just put me even more off Sabriel. In any case there was always a direct line between him and Dean. Of course, Dean literally has also crossed off his bucket list sleeping with a favourite porn star, so though chronologically it seems Gabriel got there first, it’s another Dean trait being handed to him.

But on the other hand… back to the serious line… he DOES have hang ups, and he has the same angel hang ups that Cas does. This is the comparison of what they did after the apocalypse, and the diverging paths they were on. Cas felt this obligation to God and Heaven which played an overall part in his downfall in season 6 - 6x20 hammering home that he’s waiting for God to tell him no before he does the thing, and in that moment of despair of missing the sign, he goes and does it. Cas has been struggling with this a long time and this is another thing along with the Sister Jo storyline and the stuff she said to Lucifer in 13x13 about feeling human, that picks up where we were in season 10 with Cas and the human arc and so on, and how he relates to being an angel. The sense of burden and obligation, his restraint from doing stuff like naffing off to hook up always obvious because we had Balthazar in 6x03 advising him to do what he had done, and what now we know for sure Gabriel was busy doing in the same time, only much better at staying under the radar about it.

Cas has never faked his death but he has died time and time again and each time he rises once more with an obligation and duty… and this time he’s determined to work out WHY he was brought back, but see also rambles in 13x14 re: no you dummy you were brought back because your family loves you and wants you around, not because you HAVE to do anything, so stop running around trying to find that purpose and do what you want because you want to do it.

… but you know, do Dean instead of pornstars

-

“He goes on and on about pornstars”

*Sam looks utterly grossed out* “Cas, please…”

Cas is a good egg, he and Sam don’t need to know the deets so he skips over an entire wall

-

what’s with Lucifer’s suit?  
I know I’m supposed to be all fashion meta-y but honestly all I got is “it’s boring and black and with the sunglasses he’s obviously a douche and evil but is he supposed to look like one of the MIB?”

mittensmorgul  
He’s playing that other Lucifer, the one who moved to LA to solve crimes? Maybe?

elizabethrobertajones  
ooh is that a thing? :P  
hahahaha

mittensmorgul  
either that, or my first thought was heck he thinks he’s one of the Blues Brothers  
“We’re on a mission from God.”

elizabethrobertajones  
yeah it looks a lot like that  
their whole thing was - originally - to do something to help a priest, right?  
I only watched half the movie

mittensmorgul  
YEP

mittensmorgul  
well it was an orphanage they were raised in that they were trying to save, run by Sister Mary Stigmata

elizabethrobertajones  
anyway I never watched enough to know if they were truly misguided or did something good and their nonsense was just them being nonsensical :P  
like, I know they were raising chaos but did they do it?  
you said “trying” to save >.>

mittensmorgul  
yeah, all sorts of wacky circumstances try to prevent them from putting on a fundraiser concert to save the orphanage (including the police, neo-nazis… all sorts of “evil”)  
but the end of the movie is the concert, and they save the day  
Let the Good Times Roll as it were  
(Lucifer, however, failed to pull the trick off and gave up)

elizabethrobertajones  
yay :D  
so the reference could be that he’s trying to do good like they are but continues to be a total fail whale

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He tries to listen to prayers, and after like 3 seconds decides it’s awful and he hates it when it’s just people “whining” and begging for help - this is an ongoing part of his comparison to human!Cas, when Cas went to the church and dealt with faith from the other end, being the petitioner instead (having already been God at this point :P). The Buckleming vs faith stuff is a surprisingly good and consistent thing, and other notable moments are Dean’s confession in season 10 and Amara being affronted by the Church in season 11.

Lucifer tunes in on a random exorcism instead, probably because he thinks it’s more fun.

Poor random demon (Anthony?)… that would ruin your day.

I mean, technically he did exorcise the girl…

Probably should have just claimed to be God, not Lucifer. If you wanted to impress them. Now it just looks like these priests have a bigger problem on their hands…

Yep that went about as well as it could go. You need to stop… melting people..

oh what do I care

-

Anyway Lucifer has no self control because tantrumy child blah blah blah

-

I took a break to catch my mum up on 13x17 and wow it really rubs it home how Heaven and Hell are being manned by performing buffoons with none of the skills to do the job. Asmodeus is a loser and not even juicing himself up has made him anything more this season, summed up best in an episode where he’s entirely absent and Cas’s response to being imprisoned is weary eye rolling… and Lucifer is just playing at being his dad, while continuing on the path of revealing his temperament to make it impossible for him to rule effectively…

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lol Ketch is so out of the game: “these… I don’t even recognise” *Dean opens his gun to reveal the angel killing bullets*

You gotta play to keep up

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“You don’t look good.”

“Well, you’re not my type either.”

Dean remembers last season, huh? He is pretty on the ball about not getting seduced that time and knows Ketch would do it at the drop of a hat to get what he wants from Dean.

see also: top bunk and Dean agreeing subtext from last episode

basically: Dean is still a small amount vulnerable to Ketch’s seduction depending on his leverage, despite everything Dean knows about him, and that’s enough to put up the barrier. Especially when he’s hurt.

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Oh no, Ketch asking Dean what’s up with Charlie anyways and guesses “she broke your heart” and Dean symbolically collapses.

Literally what happens to Dean between 10x21 and 10x22

… okay metaphorically

I mean platonic heart breaking

I find it literally impossible not to mentally insert the feeling that Ketch killed Charlie in another lifetime and doesn’t remember it and Dean is struggling with that, but Ketch genuinely has no idea, but he has become such an avatar of Buckleming nonsense in my head that I can not disengage him from the concept of dead Charlie - because also MAGDA poor lil duckie - and as such I feel a sort of all-purpose Buckleming rage directed at both the concept of Charlie’s death and Ketch speaking on their behalf, which ends up in a very weird cross-purposes where I am struggling to read the story accurately, which is to say, that Ketch is genuinely innocent and just being annoying, rather than actually responsible.

-

Don’t watch stuff this tired, kids

-

And, of course, immediately after establishing that Dean is somewhat vulnerable to Ketch’s seductions, he swoons and Ketch comes running to check his temperature and open his clothes to check his wound

#manly bonding in the woods

-

guys, this is what Ketch WANTED to engineer in 12x14 but couldn’t get his shit together to be human enough to actually do the things that turn Dean on

like… heal him

-

*cough*

-

Not saying that there’s a serious danger Dean will be seduced. However, Dean wounded in the woods for the sake of Ketch taking care of him is a fan fic concept and as contrived homoeroticism as the #manly sweat lodge episode with Cole.

-

“How’s it look, mom?”

You guys have the most fucked up thing ever and I refuse to engage and you can’t make me

-

Is cas healing gabriel or reading his mind aka more invasive stuff

-

oh good, he is trying to heal Gabriel despite  thinking it’s impossible. He’s trying to “jolt his mind into thinking straight”

I am curious about how we have no Sam n Cas elsewhere aside from the one argument. We’ve had several scenes with them now, enough to see the pattern that they appear to be focussed on Gabriel more like they are the side characters to his return, but being used to explore it and we are just getting them mostly as actors to his recovery, rather than their own feelings about what it means for him to be back and if they trust his story and so on

-

Sam looks distressed that Cas thinks that they can’t bring Gabriel back to himself. Considering they have the grace they need to open the portal, it seems he genuinely does feel bad for the guy, and even if he didn’t die on their behalf and buggered off to live the high life after telling them how to sort the apocalypse out from afar, he did enough that Sam feels genuinely grateful to him.

It’s also possible that he’s dealt with Dean enough to see right through his shit, and of course there’s plenty of parallels to trauma Sam has been though. Gabriel looks like the version of Sam in 6x22 who remembered Hell, and that’s more than enough for Sam to sympathise, especially with the bonding scene with him and Rowena in 13x12. All told, there’s enough here to say Sam is deeply invested in the SUBTEXT if you know the character history

just… idk… I would prefer some Sam n Cas talk about it away from Gabriel to get more of a sense of it, and I hope that scene is coming but I’m worried it won’t

-

Ketch seems to still be determined to fix Dean

-

Mmmhm.

-

Sorry that was a “if I had energy I would be rolling on the floor laughing at the #manly healing in the woods camera angles, like I did with 10x15, but as it is I have no energy so a raised eyebrow and low "i see you” noise in my throat will do" comment

-

We now also have a back and forth at least here with healing Dean and trying to get through to Gabriel. Sam is alone with him now. I think this is where we will see that speech from the promos.

-

Sam shuts out Cas as a purely symbolic gesture

-

dude can hear through walls and if the last time you two were chilling in the bunker for an episode is any indication, SEE through them too

side note: see also 9x11 for Dean x Crowley and Crowley’s play at seduction, including the gross fatherly overtones to go with it

-

With context, Sam starting from the point that Gabriel has to dig himself out of the hole seems to reference 6x22 even more directly. He sees where Gabriel is and he’s got direct experience from having his psyche broken and going catatonic. This room is playing the part of the panic room - the Bunker now can split between dungeon and bedrooms depending on how people relate to the Winchesters. Gabriel can be kept here instead of in the dungeon because they deem him good. Sam being kept in the panic room was for his own sake, but it still seemed sort of imprison-y, but then, also paralleled 4x22.

Anyways.

-

“You think it’s safer inside. No more torture, no more pain. No more… expectations.”

Look, Sam, it’s lovely of you, but you are one rare cookie who voluntarily clambered over your broken wall and took back all the fucked up parts of yourself to be whole again

-

Oh boy now Sam is talking about how he’s nothing like his dad and family and the whole comparison between the two of them that appeared when Gabriel was revealed as more than the Trickster. How they both ran away from their lives.

Sam’s colour palette in his plaid exactly matches the walls and the writing on them

-

“And then my family needed me” (Dad’s on a hunting trip…) “and this is my life. No matter how many times I try to fight it, this is what I was put here to do”

Like Cas, he has sought meaning in a “why meeeeee” way, and come to conclude, through more natural deduction than most have at hand due to their high connection to the cosmos, that where they are and what they’re doing is their divinely ordained purpose

interestingly, in 13x05 Dean was told this about himself, and he’s the only one we know for sure IS supposed to still be doing a job, per the cosmos, while Cas and Sam both have decided for themselves that it is what they’re supposed to be doing. With dramatic irony, we know Cas is wrong due to 13x03, but Sam’s is entirely more complicated and an entire essay on his character and where he is now in relation to his job and family and whether he feels obligated etc, but at the end of the day, I feel like this shows both that he is mostly content to do this - but always historically more likely to say it’s because it’s what Dean does and without Dean he wouldn’t be doing it (see also: dad’s on a hunting trip) but this always leaves open the concept that Sam still feels like at his core he’s not entirely built for this life and there’s a lil part of him that is still oriented towards normality, that he still has an itch that might follow him to his grave about living a somewhat normal life.

As I have talked about this a lot I will stop here, but in any case, technically nothing new, but Sam phrasing some stuff that I have analysed about him a lot and it’s always nice to hear your ideas repeated on screen :D

-

“Sure, hookers and monte carlo sounds great” dude, sam. PORN STARS. not hookers. Have some respect, man!

-

Trust Gabriel to set it up so Sam’s big emotional speech needs that interjection. Always fucking with him :D

Sam’s getting to the speech about making the world a better place and being needed - the need/want thing is very interesting in this context that Sam has reached out to Gabriel via not wanting to help, having a sense of wanting to be elsewhere and wanting to be free, but then saying they NEED to save the world and make it a better place, and that there are external pressures like family that NEED them there.

-

It makes Dean’s “need” in 8x17 SO horrifically personal in context it makes me weep

-

since I didn’t write down a sneaking suspicion it was Charlie in time, I am taking the big cookie for calling Gabriel’s first words, after being so freaking annoyed about not knowing them last episode, and waiting to see what they’d be this episode… “Porn stars. They were porn stars, Sam.”

I mean, thematically, use the right words, but also hahahaha I totally got Gabriel’s line and intent down perfectly :D

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Anyway. Big cookie because last episode I was chattering about how either they’d be epic, or they’d be ridiculous, and we got ridiculous: after the Trickster lost his voice, the only way it could come back was being left an opening to say “porn stars” as his first words back.

-

I’m so happy

-

eeeep the Bunker doesn’t seem to be built to contain archangel nonsense

or Buckleming forgot

who knows

maybe Asmodeus got the same confusing 20 mile radius as everyone else… he’s gonna go stand in a corn field and look around like “… where are you?”

-

Dean full on sweet potatoes face plants

Ketch is still bothering him about Charlie which is still making me feel like he murdered her in a past life and symbolically he fkin did and I think on some deep down metafuckery level Dean knows that.

-

Ketch tries to suggest AU Charlie would tell the angels what they want to know and Dean’s like, I know my Queen, she would never in a million billion universes do that. She’s a Good Egg.

“Charlie was like family. She was a sister to me. She did more for me and Sam than I could ever say. And she was butchered by these fucking writers, and we couldn’t get there in time. And I - ”

:<

Dean knows he failed her, just like he failed Kevin. He should rescue AU Kevin while they’re at it.

-

Yeah yeah show me the bathtub, you’re not fuckin tugging these heart strings, you’re tugging the “I will punch you in the face” strings

-

Then Ketch is all full of regret about people he didn’t TRY to save. “Duty, and all that.” Asmodeus really broke him, but he broke him in the direction that Ketch was ALREADY broken by the BMoL, and Ketch clearly is adrift and seeking a different path - there’s something about his story which is not Cas-like but still has a shade of it - he has fallen from his organisation in dishonour, but he didn’t even do that right, he just failed to be as big a dick as he could have been, was killed by people who righteously were pissed off with him, and when he popped back up he went undercover and sold his services to a high bidder, to distract from his lack of purpose, only to realise he did have some sense of morality after all, even if it had initially enormous lines like “oh shit, literal lucifer” rather than nuances, but now he is reflecting on what at the time was duty and now seems failure - his Lily Sunder moments, but again… knowing he was a dick literally right up until just now when he’s suddenly turning his life around.

And blah about analysing him much more. Watching 13x17 in the middle of this episode has been confusing about my Ketchmodeus resistance/feelings, as I am now genuinely curious about them and the part they play in this story, even if intellectually I’m like “Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” to the entire concept.

-

“Well, you do suck.”

-

Glad Dean is here to keep us on the right track, re: cool motive still murder :P

-

“Perhaps rescuing this Charlie will wash some of the stain off my hands.”

look, Dabb, whoever, thanks but really, I am good over here loathing Buckleming. Get them to write a signed and sealed letter to prove they are behind this and mean it, and maybe I’ll accept it as a meta commentary from their mouths. In the mean time, yes, this can be a line for the greater show, but these 2 writers are not getting sympathy without me being certain they mean it.

-

Dean bumps Ketch on the shoulder, all friendly like. Welp. He’s dead. It was a punch, not a pat. Gentle, but.

-

Heee, Charlie (Celeste?) saying “Bite me”

tbh I should call her Celeste. I have no idea what name she’s been using but Charlie was just an alter ego and I KNOW she was born Celeste Middleton if I don’t know anything else about her. Charlie is really only a name she uses because Sam n Dean know it and care about her as Charlie

-

Anyway, it’s the “fuck off” club

-

Okay, seems Asmodeus asked around/looked in Crowley’s diary and found out where Sam n Dean live, and what “within 20 miles of Lebanon, Kansas” generally means when some fuckery is afoot, and just phoned Sam up rather than go right there.

Importantly, Sam has been chatting to Asmodeus for the entire time minus a week in the Bad Place AU between 13x07 and 13x13 as he was carrying the bulk of the communications with “Cas”

-

Also, yellow eyed demons are kinda scary, especially when you don’t have a Colt and have an entire life time trauma caused by the bro of this guy

-

Oh pfft Lucifer is in this episode.

Oh! Sister Jo! Hi!!!! <3

She’s sitting on the sofa and making me feel sulky about sofas and their general existence around here.

Asmodeus was also sitting with his feet up and had a pattern on the sole of his shoes which looks superficially similar to Jo’s.

-

woaaaaah whaaaaaat Lucifer LIED about being able to make angels and give ‘em back their wings??????????????

-

So yeah Sister Jo just narrowed her eyes and she’s either gonna rip his throat out now or plan bloody murder by the end of the season :P

-

She’s ripping out his throat. Wonderful. Tell it like it is *loads of clapping hands emojis*

-

GET OFF HER YOU BRUTE

-

“and now you don’t have me” *storms off*

I love her

-

I can’t believe Charlie is using Charlie Bradbury in this AU as well. I mean, I totally can. I wonder if Buckleming even know she’s called Celeste :P

-

I’m still wondering if that angel with all the speaking lines who got away is AU!Cas

-

“We’ve got to get you out of here”

“Who the hell are you?”

… Dean you have so many cool lines but you’re not being written by Robbie Thomspon, so “no time” will do I suppose

-

Sam n Cas wandering around the Bunker with the warding failing… uhoh

-

Cas really does seem to be here because he’s in this episode, so far, although the support is nice for Sam I am still feeling like they aren’t cashing in on the Sam n Cas dynamic, so even if it’s them fighting together, I’d love to see it. I like that they have a comfortable relationship but, and big butt, it’s like if there’s no ongoing plot between the two of them, Buckleming really can’t or won’t think of anything for them to say to each other that isn’t 100% about the plot.

Honestly there should be a metric where in episodes with Sam n Cas they talk about something other than Dean or the plot, which even Buckleming do pass and others fail - like the crappy car exchange in 11x03. But, like. Should be a regular function of if they’re in an episode together in the same scenes, they can at least, like… exchange pleasantries.

-

I wonder if we can see the warding because Cas can see it or if Sam can too. I’m headcanoning Cas POV unless proven otherwise

-

I am pretty sure I just saw Cas get knocked on his back and in the very next shot be back on his feet and fighting, which means we got both the cas on his back tickbox and also proof it only happens when he’s in a bad mood where he stays down??

-

Asmodeus wanders in like sorry they didn’t design the warding for me.

come on, buddy. that’s a “I walked out the demon trap because it’s boring if I stay in here” line

-

Interestingly the writing does seem to be genuinely interested in Gabriel being traumatised and showing clearly that Asmodeus is the abuser, so idk if that’s a wider picture thing or what because Buckleming kinda suck at considering how people, you know… feel… about things… but it’s actually making the entire dynamic entirely more interesting

in any case, I really  hope this scene ends with Gabriel saving them thanks to the grace and a lil TLC to help him remember himself but that that’s not the end of his Asmodeus fear - which goes to show that even a weak shitty demon can be truly scary when he uses his power to abuse and we can’t just say Gabriel is way more powerful than him, why is he scared of him, rather than devaluing it this way… who knows

-

Anyway. COME ON GABRIEL *cheering wildly despite my initial disappointment in his return* I guess I’m all in now… he’s here and I said they’d fuckin make me root for him because I still like Gabriel even if I don’t like that he’s here right now :P

-

He looked terrifying while he still had the cuts on his lips and the glowing eyes.

Now he clean!

And he got fluffy wings!

-

*random power ball throwing bullshit*

*Gabriel like nah*

-

YAY Asmodeus is dead and it was an extremely satisfying and personally vindicating for Gabriel immolation!

*immediately and permanently stops caring about him as a character*

-

Bleh, I was wondering about the bit at the start with Charlie deflecting at the maybe maybe not AU Cas angel on the bridge but now she’s wondering if Dean n our Charlie were a couple and Dean’s like oh no she was into chicks and Charlie’s like cool I like her, but does that imply AU Charlie is straight? I mean, in 7x20 she couldn’t flirt with the security guard even in a fake way to save her life, but I was hoping the earlier thing was just to show she was tougher in this world.

Bleeeeeh

-

Charlie has met Mary, who should theoretically be as many years younger than her as Mary is to Dean, as Charlie is the same age as Dean. No wonder she’s baffled.

-

Oh thank god someone stopped Buckleming using Sam n Cas to recap the entire plot of the season so far to Gabriel

-

I wonder what Gabriel even thinks about it when he drops off the map for 8 years and as soon as he’s back, Sam and Cas are like, so. Uh. Michael vs Lucifer and some other shit?

-

I mean obviously he’s leaving, but in a wider meta sense, of, like, do these guys ever stop? The real Michael isn’t even around so they get an AU one to bother them!

-

Cas using the “turn your back on your father’s creation” line is weak, but deliberately so, I think. Cas cares very little about anything in terms of Chuck and what he wants and does. Using it on Gabriel is a thin hope that he still cares for the principles he seemed to care about, or that he had searched for God as well as he admitted in 5x08, so perhaps, just a little, it might still sway him to think of it in these terms.

Cas has no conviction on that front, because what has Chuck ever done for him as far as Cas feels, so he can’t really use that line on Gabriel and mean it

-

woah what a surprise, without the weird Ketchmodeus thing going on any more Ketch just wants to stay in the AU who ever would have guessed he likes it here better than cool original flavour earth

-

He really is banking on Charlie being as good as she’s reported to be if he’s planning on wandering into a camp with Mary in it like yo I’m here to help

-

I do like tough!Charlie, though if she’s straight!Charlie, I’ve just gotta hope that growing up in the AU, she never got a chance to learn to be comfortable with herself in that same way and oh noes maybe Mary can help…………….

-

Dean doesn’t want to lose Charlie again, but he has also to deal with the fact she has Charlie’s face but she’s not his Charlie, just another Good Egg with her face.

-

Holy crap he gave his iconic gun to Charlie

-

TFW catching each other up

…

why do I feel like Dean would be the one to get Gabriel to fight now Sam and Cas totally struck out? I guess there’s another Gabriel episode coming up soon soon soon, which will presumably sort this out.

-

Ah whoops, you need more angel grace, huh?

…I shouldn’t tease Sam, as this all sinks in he’s looking increasingly upset and I think Cas needs to prop him up right now because last time this happened he nearly turned into a miserable puddle of defeat on the floor

-

Okay don’t yell Dean, we’re all stressed and this was all out of everyone’s hands… you all made the best decisions in the moment

-

I feel genuinely uncomfortable with that realisation, especially to think that no one dropped the Buckleming idiot ball and they’re using genuine unfortunate circumstances to create the tension whaaaaaaaaat

-

Dean’s reaaaaaaally not doing well either. Cas needs to prop him up too.

In his case, maybe a bubble bath.

Mostly cuz he’s really grubby, though.

-

This is also the first time in a while that they haven’t wandered through the Buckleming script looking kinda perturbed, but Jensen is acting his freaking socks off.

Where did this material all come from? I said this set up might play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses but this is uncomfortably not-terrible.

-

Also LOVING this shot of Dean with Sam and Cas over his shoulders

-

Dean better not be thinking of hurting Gabriel just to go back though.

I mean, it’s urgent, but… like…

what is Jack up to right now? He and Bobby and Mary are not just sitting on their thumbs.

-

Next episode is another unholy Rowena & Yockey team up, right? Or is that 20?

Oh gosh we’re so near the end of the season.

I’m so tired.

night night.


	19. 13x19

Hit me with it, Yockey

(expectations: like… yockey levels)

(edit at the end of the episode: expectations exceeded. These notes are literally 10k words. Um. Take a day off work. Download this to your kindle.)

-

Getting RIGHT into the angel fall/angels going extinct thing… it’ll be curious how this is shaped around Cas’s side of the story, as he hasn’t confronted this concept a great deal, considering that it’s his fault - Dumas told him so but since then Lucifer and Anael have been covering this problem on their side of the story… it’s Cas’s turn to finally catch up to it apparently.

Which makes me wonder if Lucifer is going to last the episode as the current ruler of Heaven, though obviously he’ll live longer than this, unfortunately, there are several avenues to take for Cas but Anael’s annoyance at Lucifer and his lie about not being about to make new angels being exposed last episode means his political platform he ran for the throne on has been undermined. Now IRL that doesn’t mean a whole lot to a politician in power, but we’ll see :D This season has been repeatedly telling Lucifer he’s weak and useless and no one likes him and he’s ineffective, coupled with his own boredom and inability to understand and master his nature to get what he wants. Yockey really had a go at him in 13x12, and this episode appears to be wrapping up a lot of sides of the story Yockey has so far played with this season…

-

Blah blah Rowena is powerful and free (yay)

-

Blah blah Jessica the Reaper and Billie - not sure if recap is for the slow of thinking who need the reminder of how she got her power and who she was or if it’s particularly ominous for what happens here

-

Asmodeus recapped as “who cares, Gabriel killed him and now the story that subplot represented is about ME” so all we see is him getting burned up :D

I’m assuming this episode will 100% be “Gabriel is in the wind” and the tip off will either come at the end of this episode or the start of next, so this is just catching us up on last episode and reminding us what the objective is here

-

Rowena! She’s drinking a purple cocktail which is just hilarious. Hi guys, colour symbolism o'clock. It reminds me of the open of 9x21 and how Abaddon and those angels all had cocktails.

-

Fascinating TFW shot from the space of the telescope, or where the rift was. 

We’ve never had one with the curtains around the edge of the camera before - it gives it a sense of us watching from the telescope/rift, and we have TFW cramped into the space framed by the war room and the railings and window which make bars around them, with the big dark library around them. Cas is standing, opting not to use human furniture, while Sam and Dean sit, and they’re all clustered around the only warm light source in the scene, with the lamp situated in Cas’s core. It wholly seems to make him the centre of everything and is a wonderful family shot.

The same composition was used from the war room looking into the library to give Jack wings in 13x06, and now it’s the opposite way for Cas, but he still has the lanterns, and in a way the curtains bracketing the scene, almost like you could go so far as to say the wing imagery has them wrapped in the safety of his wings, and the curtain effect might be to suggest closeness and comfort instead. That they’re working with Cas again for a moment.

-

“OH! THE HANDSOME ANGEL IS THERE! HELLO TWEETIE-PIE”

Rowena sounds so much like me when I realise Cas is in an episode I feel legitimately called out.

Also me: not listening to a word Cas is saying while being overwhelmed by Cas’s presence :P

-

Immediately: cuts to JUST Dean n Cas to react to Rowena hitting on Cas from afar

-

*Cas makes distressed noises*

-

It’s okay honey, I don’t think Dean would let her hurt you :P

-

I mean, Rowena’s to-do list might be something magically ominous, or someone literally to do (to get something)

-

If the banners are not made up they have advertising on them for a pharmaceutical company so I have to assume they ARE made up, and this one says “distant empire” which feels like it could have a reference to the AU

the art she is standing in front of (and insults) is a deconstructed person who you can see right through

(note post-episode: well that happened to her and Billie did it)

-

So she insults them for being all work and no play and we get a close up shot of Sam being annoyed to see that.

After we had Dean n Cas caught together in annoyance at her flirting with Cas

-

Half the reason I live-watch like this is because then I can pause for the solid 30 seconds I needed to laugh about Cas ending their conversation, “You know, she’s right… You never go to parties.”

He wants to be invited! Let them have fun! And parties! And Cas can go in a nice suit and Dean can be furiously distracted all evening by it!

Honestly for a moment Cas might have been considering that as much as he loves these guys if he fell in with Rowena he might have some more fun

I mean this is the angel who got distracted riverboat gambling while they were looking for Cain, he has a side we don’t see a lot of that probably looks good sipping a cocktail

-

Okay Rowena is a hilariously wonderful assassin. How much work did she have to do to find that guy and get the song to play and - yeah. Wonderful. I love seeing Ruthie being used so well :D

Poor Elizabeth though, I mean, just on principle that Elizabeths… She was the one who was running the art thing according to the banner so that was definitely not a randomly placed banner…

-

Wait I’m sorry is this scene just Dean n Cas alone together in the kitchen, aka Dean’s safe comfy space where he goes to be happy aka Cas’s safe happy place where he goes to be comfy? uuhhhhh but I didn’t do anything particularly good this month to deserve it??

-

Dean gets coffee to grease the thinking wheels, then immediately decides he needs a drink of beer instead, offers Cas one, Cas says no, but Dean’s already intent on getting him one anyway, which was obvious from a million miles off that it wasn’t a question he was just asking it to tell Cas he was getting a beer too (he likes the gesture even if it does very little - 12x10) and obviously exactly when Dean has his head in the fridge to cool his blushy lil face while making the gesture to Cas which carries all the symbolism of inviting Cas into the home etc while they stand in their personal safe space (stand, not sit, around the breakfast bar where God once served Sam n Dean pancakes) Cas has the oh no I have to go to the angels for help thought which symbolically constantly severs them, and last time he went to the angels it ended with him being imprisoned by Asmodeus for weeks…

-

That was an exchange and a half. I am assuming much giffed and laughed over. Dean and Cas and sports terms, huh? not like we’ve never talked about THAT before. Please tell me the coda fics are Cas explaining the bases to Dean like he’s never heard of them.

I love how the tables are turned that now Cas knows shit about being human he is constantly getting the season 4/5 reactions from himself when Dean says stuff, by saying stuff to Dean and utterly stumping him not with the term itself but that it’s Cas saying it and using it correctly - it’s utterly flipped their awkwardness dynamic and it’s beautiful.

In just 2 scenes I can see the actors are 100% on their A Game for this episode, which means it’s probably a doozy

-

Whoops and now they’re arguing like deep ethical stuff about consequences and decisions

-

If anyone wondered if there was a point where Dean n Cas’s voices would level out a bit clearly needs to watch this scene, where it’s like someone is tipping a bag of gravel onto the counter in front of them

#intense

-

Now Sam’s here also having to justify decisions made earlier in the season to the Court of Dean because Rowena exploded someone and Sam is hoping there’s a valid explanation for it (probably, but Rowena sure looked like she was having fun along the way :P)

-

“Just don’t get dead again,” Dean warns Cas, taking a drink of his beer and looking furiously at him, instead of saying “Because I DIED when you were dead last time and that was in the recap so check and mate, look after yourself, you fucking reckless asshole.”

-

Man in trenchcoat arrested after wandering through child’s play park with a knife in his hand

-

I love that they use this “fortress” with the slide in the background

…

and then the lil horsie on a spring

-

Oh no this poor angel I already love the poor guy.

What’s the point of guarding Heaven when the Enemy has already gotten inside?

-

“Nice blade… are we gonna fight?” Poor guy. He’s in absolute magazine model business casual, HOT as a male model, and drunk from a paper bag in a kid’s play park in the day.

-

“Well this isn’t exactly the welcome i was expecting”

“Yeah well, we’re all learning how to deal with disappointment lately”

… you’re like the CIA looking over its shoulder and realising Trump is already in the White House and at this point what foreign threat can possibly do more damage :P

I mean as well just… #mood for pretty much everyone the last few years

-

Sometimes when I write dialogue I think I am putting “well” in too often and then I realise that in SPN they say it every line and it makes me feel better

-

Okay he slid down the slidey thing, this is now the Best Angel

Reminds me of the BTS footage of “Cas” and “Gadreel” sliding down the slide in 9x23

I mean this guy is basically Gadreel the day after the whole garden incident

-

“None of the angels are thrilled with your "ongoing adventures”“

Cas continues to be the queer kid who went off backpacking with his hot boyfriend, leaving the family making various degrees of conservative warbling noises about it

-

Oh now Cas is just getting laughed at for thinking it’s important to guard the gates of Heaven, in a VERY judgemental way.

-

OH NO Now Indra wants Cas to just kill him to save the effort of fighting :(

Oh honey

-

Aw yay Cas didn’t kill him and now he’s sitting on the lil springy horsie

Oh dear.

The sound of him creaking back and forth on it is TRULY chilling

This is a serious show

-

"For what it’s worth… good luck.” :( :(

-

Coming into Heaven, Cas is once again framed in a door of about the same size and shape as how he was framed by the bars in the background in the Bunker -

this contrasts directly with the comfort of where he is at home, to the starkness of Heaven. 2 empty chairs flank the space, and he’s alone here, but the shape is the same. The message seems simple of which is more home for him, but in both he is framed with bars - there’s still conflict, still a sense of being trapped between truly being at peace with either.

The kitchen scene shows the conflict weighing HEAVILY in Dean’s favour, and the subtext of the season is because he’s too concerned to let Cas die again while not wanting to tell him out loud

-

Cas is also the only colour in Heaven, and that includes how all the angels these days dress in grey

-

Dumas and the other angels appear and silently watch Cas as he explains his bit - still not telling him what’s going on and giving THEIR side on what is so wrong, while he gives his. The news that Gabriel is alive is enough for a reaction, at least, but not so much of one as to suggest it really makes them feel ANY better

There’s whispering and a “not yet” while Dumas is hearing Cas out, maybe wondering if he has the power to help them when he seems mostly to be petitioning THEM

-

He carefully avoids saying “Jack” and says “the missing nephilim” instead

-

And then Lucifer presumably powers down… heaven…

-

Oh, and we’re just left wondering about what the power fluctuations were.

-

In the theme of weighing words this season - not getting words wrong, using the right words, communicating the right things, the importance of Gabriel’s first words back being withheld for multiple episodes and then being “porn stars” - finally only after the indication something is seriously wrong in Heaven from an external reason, Dumas says to Cas that they can help each other, in a simple statement, having let him talk for a minute about what is going on so far and what he needs from them.

It’s very powerful writing.

-

“Still no answer,” Dean says, and Sam echoes, “Still no answer” - on the theme of words words words, they’re talking about communication, about not getting their answer, and in their case, they both have to say the same thing, Dean saying the obvious, Sam repeating a confirmation of the obvious, as if they both need to say it, that they don’t trust the situation or except to hear themselves say it.

-

Dean likes the “fun, flirty Rowena that … mostly helps us”

-

Jessica’s appearance is like both Anna in 4x20 and then Ruby in 3x09, in the back of the car and then in front of it, forcing them to stop and talk to her. It’s effective :D

-

“It’s been a little sad watching you go this long without telling Sam about me”

Yeah it’s a barb pretending to be personally affronted but what it ACTUALLY means is that after 13x05 Dean was given a lot of information by Billie, who then set Jessica to watch him. Dean’s now at multiple critical points and also in a day to day way failed to tell Sam anything about what Billie told him, on which the whole cosmic order apparently rests.

Me being me, I’ve been keeping close track of it all and commenting every single time it would have been appropriate to say something, or that Billie was busy facepalming in the background. Turns out she was busy so it was Jessica doing the facepalming, but aside from that detail, my constant attention to this detail has really paid off. :P She DOES know and she IS judging them and for the entire time this season they’ve been running between worlds, Death has been keeping tabs on them and knows full well how Dean has not been following her advice.

Which only leaves me the question - why now? Is this because of the going into the apocalypse AU thing and Jessica has been waiting for the opportune moment ever since then - mostly, probably, when Cas isn’t around to stab her - or is there something upcoming which is even worse than what they’ve been doing so far?

-

Okay, so “why now” is maaaaybe because there’s a case in Portland for them to deal with, and since Billie already has them under her thumb, why not ask the two competent hunters with personal ties to the case go deal with it?

The fact people are dying before their time is interesting because it makes this a loose reverse of 4x15, when Death took a Holiday. This time, Death is working overtime.

-

Oh poor Jessica. She has also been made to offer herself as a resource if they need anything. She and Tessa are like… BFFs

-

“Between the reapers and Death, what has this witch got us in to?”

Rowena now depersonalised instead of “the fun flirty Rowena” because she’s causing serious trouble and is a threat and when you are a threat Dean depersonalises you.

-

“I’ve become too sentimental,” Rowena says, tickling a sketch of hilarious wee sausage Fergus

-

Awww her big dance partner is called Bernard.

Man of few words. Guessing he’s entirely enslaved to her will.

-

“I’m done defending Rowena, I’m just reading what’s there.”

The words are suggesting a narrative that isn’t what they expect; it’s interesting that they don’t assume Elizabeth was up to evil stuff and therefore she and Rowena may have had… evil connections or rivalries or conflicting interests - they’re treating the death like with the tiny info they have, Rowena lashed out to take out someone who’d gotten away with Crimes.

I mean, cool motive still murder etc, but it’s almost like the reverse of Amy Pond in 7x03, only killing people she thought no one would miss while she needed to kill people, and Sam defended her then. In their world they deal so much justice that “if you have to murder someone at least murder bad people” is a legit ethical choice, which they uncomfortably have to agree with sometimes, especially as they have murdered true innocents in the same way - killing these people they deem bad is a sight better than Sam killing Cindy the nurse in 4x22 for the supposed greater good.

But it was interesting how the writing is suggesting that this is even the scenario in the first place by suggesting that random people are dying, and that Sam and Dean are essentially assuming that if Elizabeth were killed by Rowena at random, then the choice was because she in turn had caused deaths. Or at least, Sam is defending that they’re only words on the page, and NOT creating this narrative, while Dean interprets the way Sam reads them as falling into the pattern of finding defensible reasons to kill, and arguing “cool motive still murder” on this, and while Sam says he’s agreeing, the writing is creating for us, the loophole through which Rowena may escape serious ethical charges, especially as a known villain who is casual with people’s lives and so a turn like this is still technically an improvement in character.

-

So Sam’s rather incredibly intuited that a reaper died along with Elizabeth, meaning I suppose that she was just a random target picked in order to actually kill a reaper.

Which makes me wonder if Billie knew reapers were dying here, and reached out to them for that reason (I suppose with Jessica on Sam’s mind he might be more likely to make that leap)

In any case if Rowena is targeting reapers for some reason she is even more falling into the pattern of 4x15

-

“This will be a positive experience” Honestly I can tell the show misses Cas not constantly appearing behind them :P

But anyway Jessica is determined to make the most of her workplace placement, unlike Tessa, so that’s a bonus. I love this optimistic lil reaper.

-

“If she keeps this up she’s going to throw off fate. The whole greater machinery of Death.” Honestly, this is not just 4x15, this is a lesson like 6x11, and reminding us of 6x17 too, with Jessica on their side before Atropos steps in… :P I wonder how the fates are getting on. It comes as another reminder to Dean and a new message to Sam this season that there is still such a thing as fate and assigned times to die, and as much as they are Team Free Will, they still can really only pick from a number of set notebooks of deaths.

A bonus reminder for Dean that the universe has machinery and he has already been told this season not to fuck with it, not to go between worlds, and not to do what the main goal of this mission is for them.

-

“Ever hear of The Butterfly Effect?”  
“Ashton’s second best movie.”

Listen, I’m not even taking bets that Dean thinks Dude, Where’s My Car is the best :P

Dean has also learned about this in 6x11, about how NOT taking the girl when it was her time killed the nurse and nearly her boyfriend, and even though he did eventually kill the little girl, there is a life missing from the picture before her time, permanently, when it comes to the nurse and whatever role she may have played.

-

A “mass kill off” sounds awful, but then, what might get caused by Dean continuing not to listen to Billie and unleashing something awful?

-

NOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo Sam kills Rowena??????????????

UNSUBSCRIBE

I mean

Obviously a nice happy end is that he just doesn’t do that and she lives forever, since she’s immortal anyways

hahaha isn’t this nice

D:

-

Well I do like how they’ve always had that clear connection and chemistry and in a ways it’s almost like, well, maybe he could have done it a dozen other times before now and hasn’t.

-

What’s interesting is that maybe Rowena realised this once she had Ultimate Power, and is now trying to game the system…

-

And maybe we never have to see Sam kill Rowena ha ha ha  haaa haaaa

D:

-

Aw Cas.

-

CAS LAY ON A SOFA RED ALERT RED ALERT

  


-

Also. This is mr I’ll Just Wait Here then and suddenly he’s bored enough to wander around this plain room, sampling its furniture and poking around the throne? He’s clearly altered beyond recognition.

-

elizabethrobertajones  
Listen, at some point Cas transitioned from the stoic Cas we once all knew to a new and better Cas  
we’ve been talking about this a long time  
since season 10 at least  
but I think finally I can say for certain  
the season 10 - present Cas is…  
party!Cas

mittensmorgul  
PARTY CAS

elizabethrobertajones  
and will refer to him as such meaning this period of his life indefinitely until it changes again :P  
we can keep it to season 13 if that makes more sense  
like his newfound purpose since the Empty  
but I was harping on Riverboat Gambling!Cas earlier  
so I think this is actually something that’s been going on a while  
and Party!Cas is just a more dominant trait this season than ever before  
but the arc to  becoming party!Cas has long been in motion

mittensmorgul  
that reminds me of some of the early s12 meta talking about ‘growing up’ and how the characters were getting to experience adolescence for the first time… and Cas is kinda going through growing pains too. guess this is late adolescence for him now :P

elizabethrobertajones  
awwwww  
teenage party Cas  
I love him  
so much

-

Awww he’s sleeping the other way around on the sofa now

-

He wasn’t even using furniture in the Bunker. This is clearly a dominance display thing towards Dean. Like. Not in a bad way, just in a primal Me Hunky Angel way that he’s waiting for Dean to pick up on.

-

Omg awwww Cas sitting in the throne of Heaven, looking bored. Yes, babe, you would be. Don’t go for the endgame some people want where you’d have to go sit here all the time.

Party!Cas got better things to be doing.

-

I assume Dumas told him to just hang here and wait and see, but it’s hard to know if he knows Lucifer is coming or not at this point.

-

Oh no they literally just told him to wait.

“It’s fine. Well it’s not because all of creation is at stake, but here we are.”

Cas doesn’t use the wrong words. Or if he does, having learned that humans don’t use “fine” literally and he doesn’t have time to educate Dumas on the nuances of “fine” that the Winchesters have taught him like he once did for Hannah, he will just slip up, misspeak in “human” instead of how he speaks perfectly in “angel” or Enochian, and then have to correct himself to a bunch of angels, because poor bored sweet party!Cas is not like the other angels, is he?

-

YEEEEAH THE WILD GUESSING WAS TRUE. WE’RE FINALLY BRINGING BACK NAOMI JUST BECAUSE SHE’S AWESOME AND SOMETIMES DIRECTS THE SHOW LIKE CERTAIN OTHER INDIVIDUALS THEY’RE CURRENTLY TRYING TO FIND.

I did wonder if the angel fall being referenced in the opening of the recap would be about her, because we did have the photo of Amanda Tapping chilling on set wearing suspiciously plain grey colours. Question is, did Lucifer bring her back and figure out how to do it or is there Some Other Fuckery at foot?

Okay so since I waited to talk about this in case it wasn’t true and all these signs were too obvious and we looked silly, Naomi coming back, as this flashback to Cas’s crippling flashback from 8x10 reminds us, is once more taking us back to those old early Carver era themes of what makes Cas Cas, or angels as programmable creatures, the sign that Cas being human was almost inevitable for him to be truly free. Naomi doesn’t have to die for Cas to be free of her - he just needs to not be an angel, as the point is she comes as a reminder that angels are computers and she’s the programmer who has buried herself deep in their heads.

It might be a cool time to get Cas back some lost memories or something, but, well, I probably ought to just watch before speculating on what else she brings to the table, aside from being one of the last angels to run Heaven stably - Hannah tried but the democracy she came up with eventually turned on her…

-

Also. She is a old face back again who was not from the AU. There’s honestly as many people in this season who were dead last season who are in the real world as the AU. Maybe more, lemme count… So the AU has Bobby, Charlie, and Kevin, with half a point for Michael. The main world has Cas, Rowena, Gabriel and Naomi.

-

I absolutely love how they made us pointlessly wait for the reveal. Like, just bored Cas for a while to give us some tension about why is he waiting…

-

“It’s not that we won’t help you. It’s that we can’t.”

I wonder if this room plus Indra outside are like… all the angels.

Naomi certainly sounds like the first person in a while who actually knows what’s going on

-

Hahaha Dean’s really not used to people popping up in the back of the car any more. With Cas wingless and now Crowley dead, he can finally relax, he thought

-

Oh boy I love Rowena’s Reaper Sight.

“Death doesn’t negotiate with witches.”

So it seems Rowena either wants to know HOW she dies, or to do something about it, and either way she’s really just killing the people to kill the reapers to annoy Billie into giving her what she wants before she has to give the planet the master cleanse.

-

I guess her spell is just burning up the reaper connected to the currently dying person at the same time.

-

“This doesn’t involve you boys” DRAMATIC IRONY.

I guess this does mean that she doesn’t know what they know that Sam kills her, which maaay be the info that she’s trying to get out of Billie…

Jessica has already told them, so really it’s more like just Sam’s discretion to tell her :P

-

“A drill in the head wasn’t going to kill me. You should know that.”

This is the single funniest handwave of a thing ever, because it’s 100% true and we’ve constantly had to keep telling ourselves headcanons the drill was magic and just going on assumptions that she looked pretty dead and it seemed that way and the angels talked like she was dead so um… i guess she is??

And then people were like, if Amanda Tapping really is dressed as Naomi maybe she’s back because… a drill doesn’t kill an angel…

and now she’s like… yeah.

-

Cas used finger quotes

this is like the 1 nice fun thing in this horrifying confrontation (aside from Naomi’s explanation of why she was never dead)

-

I had to take a mo to clench my fist and prepare for Cas to reference the 1000s of dead Deans thing for the first time ever

In a season where confronting your abuser is a low key or high key theme and Sam and Rowena talked about Lucifer, and Gabriel and Asmodeus were written such a way, it’s a world of excellent to bring Naomi back and have Cas say this one particular line about repeatedly acting out the murder of Dean Winchester because it’s something that’s bubbled unspoken for FIVE YEARS and two episodes under the surface of the show. Cas has never once told Dean about it, and maybe or maybe not this is a vehicle to get him to do it, but this very conceit is the undeniable Destiel underline of that episode; unspoken but it was only Dean, and it was 1000s of times, and that is what was required to get Cas even close to murdering the real thing and yet, still, not enough.

And it feels maybe a lil wrong to wring Destiel out of Cas confronting one of his oldest long running abusers with only a few lines between them to indicate the vast history, and Cas only learning who she WAS in 8x17 and what she had done to him, but oh boy that episode went for the throat with this 1000s of dead Deans demonstration of Cas’s heart.

And we are in DEEP in the season 8 redux stuff, which is amazing and horrifying for me because the season 8 meta is where this Destiel speculation grew and thrived to an enormous extent.

-

Ooooooooooooooh Naomi you magnificent asshole.

“I’m sorry goes a long way.”

“Mmhm.” *changes the subject*

-

I really hope Heaven is truly on its last legs and this is the winding down of a once great empire - it’s been reduced to a kiddy playground fort. Maybe it’s time to go :P Naomi is back in control on the admin side at least, and that means she once again is the face of the insitution, and what she once was… She was aligned towards the greater good of Heaven, at a cost of barbaric practices to ensure the long-term smooth running of the machinery.

-

“Every angel is like a walking, talking battery.”

My guy. That’s even more dehumanising for you than being a computer.

But then, dehumanising you is the point.

-

There are NINE angels in Heaven, present company included. So that’s, Cas, Naomi, Dumas and her 3 buddies, Anael, and, what 2 more guys who are on their break?

-

Yeah, 1 or 2 on Earth, so Indra and one other who went to make a run to the store for more pretzels

-

“Last men and women and divine waves of light”

ah yes the 3 genders

-

Listen yes I said that Heaven needs to go and it’s on its last legs and bye bye etc

but watching Cas deal with this is an entirely different prospect, especially when he CAUSED it.

And I’d bet Lucifer hanging out in Heaven hasn’t helped because he melts so many angels.

-

Poor Cas. I mean, the angels are so rude to him but on the other hand he’s close to being the last one :(

-

the others thought any archangel would do - long story -

yeah, Naomi just glossing over who they invited in the other day

-

Also this sounds like if Heaven DOES keep running, Gabriel would be shackled to the job, and also it would be a serious prodigal son storyline for him.

A very interesting endgame to have Gabriel installed permanently, and what the world would be like with him in charge but also for him to accept that perhaps he does have to do something responsible that God had set up

and the gabriel’s horn that he never got around to blowing - the spell that summons angels and sounds like home…

Gosh

Like, imagine if Gabriel resisted using it because he hasn’t been home since the dawn of mankind

and oh noes

I’m having *feels* about him

-

Also I’d guess the power fluctuations were not visible last times we were here because Lucifer was here, but this may have been going on longer.

-

Okay ghostpocalypse sounds awful

and no way Cas isn’t immediately putting that in the context that Sam n Dean help the world by stopping ghosts and this is a natural order THEY depend upon for their jobs to work.

-

“Surely you’ve got your witch-killing bullets handy”

Dean’s mouth twitches a millimetre more of a smile

I love them

-

Rowena’s speech about how these people hurt 1000s of sick people which is worse than the monsters they kill… “I’m striking a blow for justice”

She also talks about righting some wrongs - if that’s not bluster, then does that mean she thinks Death has wronged her?

I can not wait for their confrontation

-

“Trust me, it’s not the kind of attention you want.”

Listen is there ANYTHING supernatural that TFW can’t advise on as personal experts? They should retire and become life coaches

-

Omg, she’s really trying to get Crowley back? Really??

I mean yeah in character sure but

Is there a chance in hell that’s happening? Is this goon going to be Ferrrgus’s next vessel?

Can Crowley really come back as another actor in any shape or form?

-

I can’t believe Crowley has finally earned his mother’s love.

“It’s my fault he went down the path he did.”

-

Ahahaha Rowena’s getting meta about who gets to come back from the dead. And it’s true, this season, that so many old faces are coming back, but almost all people -

FUCLsgihsdjlf

I forgot Ketch again

\- almost all people who were close as family to them. Rowena coming back is almost the most tenuous connection of them all.

I was gonna say of them all but

-

Heheh Rowena perks up when she hears Death is a “she”, and I’m just going ahead and shipping them even harder now. Especially as Rowena’s been trying to get her attention.

-

Ahah so they use the intel they have about who kills Rowena as leverage.

This doesn’t mean Dean has to be alive for it

-

Wow Sam looks weirdly unhappy when the news breaks. Like, I’m so sorry, buddy, I just found out and… Awwwww man.

His eyes are shiny.

-

that was a hilarious move from Rowena’s minion. On the other hand, he’s inadvertently separated out Dean, who is functionally harmless against his master, from Sam, who is the only one who can murder her…

-

At the end of the season we’re getting the new fight guy a box of chocolates and some flowers, guys

I feel bad because the last guy clearly wasn’t getting anything WRONG

but holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit this season has been GOOD on a whole new level

-

“You know she’s controlling your brain?”

“She’s powerful, she’s gorgeous, and she’s paying me a small fortune. That woman didn’t have to cast a spell on me.”

……………………………………..

of course we get a reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse crypt scene in the episode that Naomi comes back

-

none of those reverse’s were foreshadowing she was coming back

-

Anyway Bernard or whatever his name was breaks the pattern - he’s genuinely not controlled. He didn’t talk all episode until now, which is a smaller theme of the season, re: Gabriel, re: using the right words, but then we finally maybe come to the end of the crypt scene nonsense because in this example Dean tries to break through to Some Guy He Just Met and the guy is like… no no I have my free will, I just wanna kill you for Rowena.

-

Oh the elevator thing is amazing

-

Oooh pink back of the hotel and pink dumpster. NOT GOOD

-

Just a thought - if Rowena takes it on faith that Sam is the only one who can kill her, then changing his fate to kill him before he gets her will certainly be a Fuck Up.

-

It also, if she doesn’t do that, ensures us that Sam is gonna be Just Fine at least until Rowena dies, giving him a random bit of Plot Armour that tbh he probably didn’t need seeing as he’s gotta be in it to the end anyways, but there ye go people die on this show when they’re blatantly coming back all the time. It means Sam can’t die in the process of doing this, to be returned later, though. If Rowena survives the finale.

-

“I get what you’re trying to do for Crowley” yeah because you’re freaking doing the exact same thing for your mom and adopted nougat nephew

-

“You’re messing with the machinery of the universe! Death won’t give you what you want!!”

…

have you tried telling this to Dean, perchance?

FYI, filed under: dramatic irony, because he doesn’t know that Dean has been given this exact same warning and the mission he is on to do the same thing has been warned against by Billie.

I suspect this episode involves Sam finding out while Dean is delayed fighting the Delightful Goon

-

“I can’t stop, Samuel. You’ll have to shoot me.”

He’s bathed in pink light the same colour as her drink from the start, and he struggles, then lowers the gun, because he can’t kill Rowena in cold blood because, well, these guys don’t go to a lot of parties, and if they don’t go to a lot of parties they don’t meet a lot of people and if they don’t meet a lot of people, the same 3 weirdoes who always end up in their path on the job end up being the only human contact outside of family Sam has, and he don’t got much family…

party!Cas will save him.

-

Okay then he swallows it down and tries shooting her and she’s like, not today Samuel

-

“You really would have shot me?”

Rowena has one (1) friend, and it is Bernard.

-

Sam has constantly had a pattern of being the more ruthless brother - ESPECIALLY towards the MacLeods, but most specially Crowley, who he tried to kill cold blooded no hesitation on about 8 different occasions, and only failed in 10x22 because he took his time because he was watching Crowley suffer. Unfortunately this trait has led him here - justifying shooting Rowena to make amends for unleashing her, as a promise to Dean he’d clean up that mess.

-

She can teleport! She also uses astral projection in an extremely trickster-y way.

I think she and Gabriel are probably parallels in some way but I think we’ll have to let the next episode (yokeyglynn mind meld) play out before I comment on that.

-

Omg Jessica.

“You’re doing really well, but you have to hurry.” *grimace*

She’s wonderful.

-

bernard’s tie is on the floor there.. if Dean kills him with his own tie I’m gonna yell in utter horror re: Cas parallels and attack dogs etc

-

Phew

-

“He was a highly trained military operative. It’s impressive that you could - ”

“SAM!?!?”

le sigh about the Winchesters

-

“Where the hell is my brother!??!!”

Come on Jessica, you know this, but can you tell him?

-

The power going to your head/no i have clarity thing is such a cliche but for Rowena I almost genuinely believe it, because she’s so calm and good at what she does

-

“I’m a flawed, petty, evil creature, Samuel. And I don’t know if I can be redeemed, but I have to try.”

See someone who has gone mad with power would not say that about themselves. She really has always known her own head and everyone around her’s heads.

-

“WHat haven’t you done for your family? What wouldn’t you do!?”

Listen, Ruthie is such an incredible actress I’m genuinely terrified of her and Lisa Berry crossing paths, because they’re too high calibre to be in the same scene on our shitty lil show that could.

-

have blanket and stuffed toy *gulp*

-

*grumbles about how that entire scene was unfair to the natural order*

Okay I need to go back and line by line it after I’m done downing this mug of tea but I watched through and there was a point I was like nose an inch from the screen in awe

Literal awe

Like just at the power Ruthie and Lisa command in a scene

-

It was Dean vs Gadreel in 9x18 good.

And that’s my highest commendation of a scene on this show D:

-

So this scene essentially sets up the premise Dean faces internally - Billie’s calm absolute stance of non interference and gentle comfort that there’s an order and it’s best to follow it, and Rowena’s furious broken anger about what the world has taken from her.

I love Rowena trading off on the cosmic importance of what she and Sam have, now knowing a secret they should not know about her finality, in order to gain her audience.

Billie ends up not saying that Dean is breaking her rule, but gives him a see you soon as a warning that if Jessica’s presence isn’t enough, then this is to remind him of what she told him… and if he’s gonna fuck it all up then they will be back in the same room chatting sooner or later, either his death or her last quiet words on what his actions will entail.

Her confidence as Rowena attacks her, the unassailable force of the cosmos who just IS. She IS Death but it’s a neutral, powerful concept that can’t be argued with or fought or truly killed. It’s part of the grief counselling theme to go back to 13x04 - Rowena is in the same boat as they all were at the start of the season, but she never got to meet Mia the shapeshifter and get a last hug from Ferrrgus. So Billie has to do the job instead, finding the words that will bring Rowena down and make her accept Death and the natural order, and where we all fit into it.

Rowena has a shattered identity and this grief was a piece to hold onto from the past, her lost chances with Crowley, who she hated in life… arghhhh.

-

“You - I know you!” Along with the Shakespearean level power Yockey has been bringing in many scenes, from Cas’s encounter with a Rude Mechanical, to the high drama, we have the absurd comedy too. Billie and Rowena have been in the same room. Same day, different apocalypse. Rowena complains none of this would have happened if they just exchanged numbers - same as in 10x23, Cas actually had to SUMMON Crowley because he didn’t keep him in speed dial like the rest of TFW and apparently had no idea his phone number was 666.

“We met, when I was a reaper.” “We totally did!” Rowena is *perfectly* the part of someone doing this encounter in, say, a casual office setting, when someone who was on another project from another company ends up in your group again.

“You’re upsetting the natural order.” Billie is no nonsense and steers the conversation back to where it needs to be. The warning behind all the actions in the season. The threat of the natural order breaking has been with us like 15 episodes now, and almost all of those have been single-mindedly focussed on doing so with Dean not telling them. Enough faffing around, Billie tells us, this is the important thing, or did you all forget while you were having all your personal squabbles.

“Bring back my son and it all stops. Say no and I’ll -” “No.”

Interruptions in TV land almost always land short for me, giving a pause where the line runs out and the next actor “buts in” but in this case Billie genuinely cuts off Rowena, and once again forces the subject back to the only thing that matters. Rowena is visibly putting on a show of threat, knowing she has leverage but fearing Billie, and her lack of confidence is visible all over even as she proudly makes the threat she knows has worked because Billie has shown up to answer it, but Billie can not give her that ground and is totally calm about doing so. And you can see Rowena practically trembling with all this, while Billie is utterly calm and grounded.

So when Rowena threatens to kill Sam and “frog up”? the natural order, Billie is already calling her bluff LAST SENTENCE when she says “go ahead” because it’s the same tone of voice, the same knowledge that she doesn’t need to truly fear Rowena doing it not just because the cosmos says so but because Rowena is an emotional mess and Billie has the emotional upper hand.

I mean think about it, Reapers are true-neutral aligned beings who spend eternity grief-counselling hundreds of people a day through their OWN deaths.

And so rowena is like “What?” and Billie can calmly explain the natural order happens how it happens, and she doesn’t have to think it’s a good thing but she’d let Rowena do it, and that knowledge that she will never, ever get Fergus back (how ironic, she’s pining for Ferrrgus, the potential of his life and how he died as a human and what he lost, and not for crowley, the demonic version of her son she reconnected with, and for all the shreds of his humanity he retained, still showed Fergus was lost in how he never gave ground on that name. Rowena was never getting him back even as early as 10x09 when she was manipulating him, Frodo calling Gollum “Smeagol” style with her presence). With no hope, Rowena can’t kill Sam just to spite Billie, when it doesn’t even MATTER to Billie, in the sense that she’s not equipped to dive in and stop her.

Rules.

Still she goads Rowena into TRYING to kill Sam, just to see what happens, because we need the conflict, and we need to see this moment where someone comes so close to upsetting the natural order, because since 13x05 it’s been teased the end of the season may and possibly WILL be some sort of natural order break… If it’s not Ghostpocalypse then it’s whatever happens when Dean does the spell he’s not supposed to do…?

And so Rowena is pushed to go in for the kill, so that more words laden with deeper meaning can be said, while her bottom lip quivers at the prospect of having to do this - while her back is turned to Billie,  but her face is SHOWN to Sam, who now starts bargaining.

“I know what you went through [lucifer]. And I know how much you lost [mary]. And I realise how much you want your family back [the rift]. But. Don’t do this.”

I mean are we burning all the emotional energy on this when it ought to be used on Dean with the rift? Or is this something where Sam personally goes through all this without Dean, but then his own issues boil over, 8x23 in the church style (and OH this season is gobbling up season 8 and spitting it out again) and he’s gonna do it for all the reasons Rowena is, but will he heed his OWN warning? It seems 100% likely if he knew what Billie told Dean he would be on her side, argue with Dean about if they should be doing it, or even have his doubts.

… Or will they all still merrily go through with it, low on conflict?

that last, “This. Is not. You. Not anymore.” is so much a crypt scene style appeal to the nature they understand of the person about to kill them, and oh we are up to the… reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse reverse crypt scene now.

And in the case of Sam and Rowena, cosmically bound, she breaks and doesn’t kill him. Which makes this a fascinating reversal, in the episode secretly about Crypt Scene Reversals, by bringing Naomi back into play, by having Cas list her crimes up to what she made him do to PREPARE for the Crypt Scene, but not mentioning that scene itself. We STILL don’t have Cas’s commentary on what that scene meant to him. Of why he stopped. Of what broke the connection. But here, Rowena has futility, her own character, her connection to Sam, even though he tried to shoot her, to stop her. Again, she has even less than Sam does in the way of family and friends.

And Dean just killed Bernard :<

“What happened to me - those were my choices.” She OWNS the “this is not you” as yes, it was what she was. She’s not mad with power. She’s mad with grief, but her clarity is real. She understands what she’s doing. But she’s being brought to the edge of madness, of killing Sam to spite the world when Billie won’t give Fergus back. This is a reversal of the crypt scene in a way where she, like Bernard, is not controlled. She’s MOTIVATED. And this is the difference, the way the crypt scenes have changed since 1x22, from utter possession through to mastering mind control, effects, brainwashing, and psychological damage, suggestion, things which give more and more agency to the one who is being pleaded with. And now it is about decisions and control and consequences. Motivation and power. Belatedly, 8x23 and the church scene can get added to the web of instances, and the weak mirror in 10x23, because they’re about personal understandings, of backing down from decisions because of a belief and desire to continue on with life, to find another way and keep on fighting…

It’s fascinating how the repeats have evolved and changed and this is all perfectly in tune with how they’ve been changing (such as Dean being the one asked to back down in 12x10 to not hurt Cas by Ishim, or Sam and Eileen the romantic couple with Sam having to talk down Mick, the actual psychologically damaged threat in the scenario…) and this is very very evolved language of the show’s own storytelling, probably deeper than most people would care to think about at this point, but as someone fascinated in long-form storytelling and the patterns it creates (hi writing an at least 12 book series of novels over here, and very much making these repeats of scenarios and motifs in the books) we’ve reached a deeply, deeply intellectual and well-realised use of the show’s language to build the tension and pay off of what happens between Rowena and Sam here, with Billie the impartial motivator.

Anyway. “It wasn’t fair,” Rowena says, and that’s when she breaks and this flips to the grief counselling thing - she stops being a threat or empowered but now reveals she really is as broken as she seems and puts her in the same spot as Sam and Dean - puts her in the place as a parallel who may or may not destroy the world in her quest to address what isn’t fair. And what isn’t fair for Sam and Dean stretches back to the cold open of 1x01, and they STILL don’t have their freakin’ mom back. “It’s not FAIR!” Rowena shrieks, and spins around, full-powered, and blasts the very concept of Death with her best lightning, taking out all her rage about the futility and impossibility of Death on Billie.

And Billie puts a hand on her hip and waits it out, unmoved, like not even Amara was, when Rowena managed to knock empty nihilism flat with the help of a few witches. But actual finality and acceptance of the loss of a loved one? Ow.

And then in the background the comedy mixed with the tragedy - Sam roly poly-ing backwards off the chair, and the stance Billie takes, absurd in the face of Rowena’s pain, which is how the world feels when you’re angry and grieving and it’s just carrying on…

And while Rowena does the lightning, her angry, miserable groaning as she tries to sustain it… it’s absolutely raw human feeling

Billie just watches as Rowena collapses to her knees, in supplication to Death now, moving to acceptance, as Billie says, “you were never going to kill him,” revealing her bluff, and the bluff is Rowena’s own character - “there was a time you would have” and that’s when we first meet her. Pre-Fergus. Ironically.

But then the background music upticks in positivity and Billie also crouches in front of Rowena, and comforts her and reaches out to her, and that’s where the sense that Death is not awful. Impartial, inevitable, but not cruel. And that lets Rowena break, and whimper, “I don’t know what I’m doing” because Billie seems to  be the first person who cares, and Rowena has let out all her rage and now she has to get to that part on the other side of grief, where you work out who you are and what you need to do to continue to live with that loss a part of you, but not destroying you. Healthily moving on rather than endlessly questing to defeat Death and get back the lost people.

In this case the AU acts as an afterlife - full of a lot of dead faces like Charlie and Kevin and Bobby, but functionally an afterlife in the sense that Mary is not DEAD but she’s functionally not in their world and whether she was alive or dead if no intervention was taken, then Sam and Dean would never  have seen her again and she was good as.

I think Jack might transcend this, as someone not really a part of the cosmos on the “normal” level, and this is metaphorical so once this metaphor runs its course for Sam and Dean to reach the same place as Rowena - a very very important part they have never reached when it comes to each other and their deaths and hence *gestures the entire plot of Supernatural so far* - I think Mary should be retrievable… She’s also a good proxy for them to learn to do this with family.

-

Ideal scenario is they step back and don’t Do The Thing but then Jack melts Michael and brings Mary back ANYWAY, but. You know. Ideal scenarios and Supernatural… hahaha they only exist as hypotheticals for you to smack  your head and go you fucking MORONS you should have moved Kevin to the Bunker by 8x13 you - you - never mind you deserve this you fuckers

-

“Sometimes life is unfair and sometimes we lose things” - Billie now delivers the anvil heavy lines about this lesson

“And some things can never be fixed, no matter how powerful we become. Some things just are.”

(That last line can be something Jack in particular needs to know maybe one day or maybe right after 13x06…)

“And sometimes we make mistakes” the most anvil heavy line but also one that implies forgiveness for a “mistake” rather than that she might feel vindictive for Rowena’s actions, and she can see Rowena is miserable and repentant and should not be punished. Though with Rowena’s self-esteem…  

“And now you’ll take me?” “No.” Billie has a smile as she says that, full of positivity and optimism for Rowena, the reassurance she needs. But then steely again - “You already know how your story ends,” and that glance at Sam. A reminder that Rowena’s death is not truly decided but she and Sam share a cosmic bond with her end written by him. But in the mean time… How do they write it is up for grabs. And right here and now, that is a promise that there is time to go out and live your best life and make amends and continue on, if Sam will not do it now, which means that Rowena still has a chance to find her way before then.

-

Anyway that scene was a nightmare let’s never talk of it again, my heart is in itty bitty pieces and I can’t marry both Lisa Berry AND Ruthie legally so best I stop thinking about it.

-

It’s unnerving to see Naomi casually sending Cas on his way. Her voice is still that Naomi Voice she used to control him and even if these are friendly goodbyes, such as these two can have together, the memory of what she did to him is in the very tone of her voice, so effective was she as a villain.

FYI this show would be fuckin nowhere without the women

-

Cas immediately expresses that they’ll find a way to fix Heaven, another mission on his shoulders, another thing he feels he has certainty on.

This is definitely winding up into Cas endgame one way or another, as Naomi tells him it’s something that may not be fixed.

“everything ends, Castiel.” she mirrors and echoes Billie, the sense of finality… she has come to terms with the fact that Heaven is losing the battle to stay running, and that may be something that she can’t stop. But for Cas who fights to the end, he is a Winchester and it may be that this sense of bleakness IS the big bad and this IS a victorious story of defeating nihilism - except that’s not the way Billie sees it, the coming to and end is not a loss in this way of a defeat. I think there’s other options for Heaven and there’s other options where the Winchesters might win without extensive damage to the world and to their own psyches, as their missions to save each other or the world have always been…

-

“Everything ends.” Naomi disappears into the light, and Metatron’s sigil is wiped off of the sandbox

(FYI for fandom newbies and peeps who don’t know the lore - that really is Metatron’s symbol, named after him as in the real angel in actual IRL lore, for reals.)

-

Cas once again picks up a handful of sand, like he did when opening up Gog or Magog to find their hearts, only to grasp at sand.

Oh Cas.

I mean this is like 90% your fault in the grand scale but OH CAS NO ONE BLAMES YOU SWEETIE, YOU WERE ALWAYS DOING YOUR BEST OKAY?

-

I suppose the poll on how well Cas is doing or not re: what heaven thinks, is like… literally… the 9 of them sit in a room and talk about it over dinner.

-

Awww Sam and Dean and Rowena sitting around drinking.

“Bernard’s very enthusiastic”

Why do I feel like this was a euphemism for sex and Rowena has enthusiastically given Bernard a whirl and is now implying his fight with Dean was - yeah this is exactly what she’s implying.

-

“I fought Death and lost…” Aw Rowena. Poor smol Rowena.

Sam thinks it’s progress that she didn’t kill him - that she chose to save the world and not fuck over everyone by doing it.

Dean thinks it’s a miracle, but he wasn’t in the room for one of the most incredible scenes the show has ever staged.

-

Also I haven’t really talked about it, but this episode is SO MUCH a worthy send off for Crowley, for having someone fight for him, for his memory to be the motivation for all this. As weary as his storylines got later in the show he was a participant in one of the OTHER most electrifying scenes of the show (“Open your eyes, Dean”) and an extremely good character for most of his time - it’s a shame Mark Sheppard is almost certainly never coming back and doesn’t want to, but late on in the season the lack of him is obvious and some things - Asmodeus, and this episode especially - feel like the recovery time the show has to take for not having him around, just as in season 7 there was earnest mourning for Cas in the time when he seemed not likely to return because Gamble had written him out intending it to be for real. This deep in the season when everyone else has popped back up post-death and is getting on with their lives, Crowley is still not back, there’s no way to GET him back, and finally it seems like the 3 people in the universe who knew him and even had a shred of care for him, are having a wake of sorts for him, 19 episodes later.

-

It’s also weirdly hollow to hear Sam talking about how they have to save the world. Yes, they have given Michael the idea to universe hop but he’s functionally unable to do it for now and may or may not be coming, but he’s not an immediate threat, they just have to go stop him as an apology for ever letting him think he MIGHT be able to do it and removing what’s essentially a watchful but currently unthreatening eye on their world before it BECOMES a problem for this world. But with the warnings from Billie, the sense the cosmic order is the most important thing, and the warnings to Dean not to topple it… Sam  has no idea and so he’s continuing to talk about how they need to get Gabriel to get the grace to do the spell to open the rift to save the world, while step 4 of 5 is the bad bad thing they literally just stopped Rowena doing to him, potentially…

-

“Lucifer isn’t the one who’s going to kill me, is he?” Rowena certainly feels a lot safer, knowing Sam will kill her. Sam will be ruthless and quick and painless, with a note of apology and we-were-kinda-friends in his eyes as he does it.

And Sam gets to break the news to her, knowing what it means to her and that’s a nice touch about how they’re both Lucifer’s victims.

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Sam looks so awkward about how he has to kill Rowena one day. Like, shit, sorry. Um, I’ll… try not to do it right now

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Sam casually offers not to kill her if possible

what a fuckin gentleman

-

What a FUCKING EPISODE.


	20. 13x20

I am very sleepy in a bad way where I don’t wanna DO anything

Expectations: I have actually been piling a fair amount on here, which is unusual for me in the sense that I have serious demands, but Glynn has some un-Bucklemining to be doing and I do trust her but on the other hand if you’ve been following along with me you know that I was disappointed Perez didn’t build up much of a Buckleming Buffer around Gabriel which means that an awful lot of the work has to be on her to tidy and reconcile.

the good news: this is the first episode since Gabriel’s return to do the actual Gabriel Recap, that even 13x18 didn’t do

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better news: when Sam is doing the speech to Gabriel the recap reminds us about Sam’s trauma being possessed by Lucifer as a direct connection to what he was talking about there, the recaps sometimes doing us a solid in confirming subtext (and sometimes not).

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Bad news: I just stated at my hand for a full 4 minutes trying to work up the energy to open and eat a banana

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worse news: I watched GBBO for 5 hours then watched the episode with my mum

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In conclusion: Dick Speight likes his face and I find that hilarious

[](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/173576771853/elizabethrobertajones-13x20-watching-notes-i-am)

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/173576771853/elizabethrobertajones-13x20-watching-notes-i-am)

Good morning on the 4th of May 2018, today I woke up feeling like a fog had been lifted from my brain, and on just-waking-up contemplation, no I can not let this one go, no matter WHAT Bobo has waiting for me on the other end.

It was more than abundantly obvious that we were going to learn the history of Loki, whether he be Gabriel or not, through this episode, but I love how on a second take showing us especially the intro to the Trickster in 2x15 with “hugh hefner type - wine, women, song” reveals both the personality of Loki, and also throws some major shade on performing!Dean, as we know that in 2x15 they think they’re describing a Trickster who may be on Loki’s level, of Loki’s type, and in a million years not considering that they’re talking about the Archangel Gabriel… At the same time we know this is Gabriel, and this is the life he’s living, and we see his illusions of women, and summoned candy and the hilarious set up he made to catch them in and so on… if this wasn’t a direct 1 to 1 of what Dean like ANYWAY (and he and the Trickster really bond over liking it with a great you seem like a decent fellow I’d hate to kill you sort of banter) this would still be a fantastic metaphor with Gabriel only inhabiting that life as a cover, and that this is telling us who the TRICKSTER was, the cover identity, that he got from someone else. I think it’s important going forward to remember that Dean got his identity from John and he wears that as his performing!Dean cover, and that Loki is not just father/mother to the demigods, but that he’s also filling the direct comparison of John to Gabriel, as this being the person he based his entire identity on and that’s essentially the emotional comparison that makes the entire episode tick.

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“Can’t or won’t” has been an interesting way to compel people through the show by tugging on their duty vs desire to act. This coming with “you two muttonheads broke the world and want me to sweep up your mess” hides the irony that the world would be more or less okay without their interference this time, and I sort of feel like it’s only through their intervention that any of the problems will be caused… For example, Jack is escalating things in Apocalpyse World but if he isn’t a direct cause then something TFW bring with them to the world or their own choices there will instead. I do not feel like Michael alone is enough of a threat. The more time passes the longer he beats out Asmodeus for being a useless villain this season, and I feel like this season would not be complete without the irony of a self-made problem. So in essence this time Sam and Dean are recruiting Gabriel to break the world.

Under the earnest guise of saving it, BUT Dean knows Billie’s warning and has been freshly reminded, and yet he is still going for it.

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As soon as we got into the episode my mum smacked my arm repeatedly and said “THAT’S NOT CENTRAL CITY! I GREW UP IN CENTRAL CITY” and despite patting her on the head and telling her to lay off poor Vancouver for the rest of the episode every time there was an external shot, I feel duty bound to at least pass on the message.

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Listen the kazoo opening is an instant classic of the show and we’ve all discussed the horn of gabriel reference etc. I like that it links us back to 6x06 (which in itself was an abandoned apocalypse era episode, refurbished for post-apocalypse, with the horn just a conceit to summon Cas and possibly have actually been about Gabriel if they crammed it into season 5) and 9x18, where it was used to rally angels. Gabriel isn’t blowing the real horn - if it exists at all - and if he were, 11 whole angels would answer. But it is an omen that when he blows it, judgement day is a comin and as I was saying I feel like bad times are coming fuelled by the well-intentioned motivations of our main characters… Like it or not, he has blown the horn.

He’s using it as an omen that he gets his revenge on Fenrir right now, as well as the soundtrack to a showdown in a meta textual way. He’s telling him, this is personalised and I’m spelling your doom. Just… Wider meanings here, mate. You can’t make it all about your personalised mission, there’s still an awful lot riding on you NOT blowing that horn :P

*Billie sighing in the background*

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Gabriel is very much playing his own western, and even if he’s let up a bit, the promo pics from 13x21 include him wearing another western style shirt - mirroring the one Sam wore in 6x18 so it’s an Approved Western Shirt :P - and though he’s a lil less overtly western here he’s still wearing the long coat to give him the silhouette of Dean stepping into his showdown in 6x18.

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It’s also reinventing Gabriel in a way where he’s not dressing just like the Winchesters as part of the season 5 mirroring, but in his own style. He had a great shirt in 3x11 (previously used 2x on the show before that) in the scene where he can appear as himself, but the symbolism of making family connections kind of overwhelmed him for a while. It’s nice to see him dressing flamboyantly different from a Winchester, and at the end of the episode he will pick the leather jacket option which is the “i am a sexy side character on spn” classic.

But the long coat and white shirt also mirrors Cas in 9x18 specifically - to pick a shared point in time for no particular reason :P - because it’s a plain formal white shirt and he’s got a long coat over it with no other details. While Cas was dressing pre-tie, there was a very similar sort of vibe. That was also Cas’s time while he was especially suffering, low on grace, and drifting on purpose aside from being very driven to do whatever distracting revenge tasks he put in front of himself. Gabriel being low on grace is going through a similar patch, and Lucifer low on grace was also compared to human!Cas. It seems season 9 Cas is a cornerstone for the mojo-less archangels, but while Lucifer was compared to Cas’s homelessness and was found wanting, Gabriel is a totally different side of Cas. He’s the side of Cas that took down Metatron.

The side, of course, which was “in love with humanity”

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The first glimpse of the wooden sword is where Gabriel is telling Fenrir they do it mano e mano, and immediately you see the surface level ridiculousness of it, but in this case it’s something where to us on the outside it’s hilarious. And you can trust Gabriel is aware of how it LOOKS. But while he is retreating into his Kill Bill fantasy, there’s something deadly serious about these weapons because on a textual level, wood from certain trees is the approved method to kill a pagan god, and why bother with an ungainly stake when a wooden katana of excellent craftsmanship is actually the perfect weapon for dealing with them? Sure, it LOOKS like a toy, it LOOKS like the practice weapon before you’re “mano” enough to have a naked metal blade.

And the ridiculousness of it is part of the sharpness of this weapon - you’re being killed by a child’s toy because your weakness is childish and exploitable. The phrase incites macho fantasies and manly fighting, but the method of dispach is a little boy’s weapon. Fenrir will be killed by playtime. And that’s the level of biting contempt involved in the subtext of this weapon. But despite the style of katana it IS a double-edged sword in the sense that it also makes Gabriel look childish for weilding it, and he IS in his fantasy, and despite the deadly serious emotional purpose in doing this, he’s going to end this episode on “tricks are for kids” indicating that he is also growing up and moving on… which suggests that everything before that moment was still him in his “childhood”.

And to get us back to performing!Dean and John, he needs to overcome Loki before he can claim this face entirely for his own, and decide on what level he wants to dress in sexy cowboy shirts but still do deadly serious things for serious reasons, and how much of his personality is his own, and what parts of this Trickster facade he really wants to claim for himself, and how much is his own personality underneath that he now can bring to the surface.

(Combining the kazoo into this, that’s also a childish joke of his own signature piece, and more playing at toys and demeaning his bigger purpose into a joke, when there’s such a larger meaning behind it)

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Anyway Speight should direct every episode because that fight scene is amazing. No one will stop him being like “i am four foot tall but i want to kick this 6 foot guy in the face and have the slickest moves”

What a hero. You can at least be the Special Gabriel Advisor and of course in this example, I am horrifying the me circa 13x13 by just being like whatever, add him to the table, he’s a member of TFW and will be in all of season 14 now.

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He kills Fenrir from behind in a move Aragorn once did, which is another shade of that coat, and, yes, another dress up fantasy that Dean has, and has actively engaged in, complete with shot-by-shot retellings of something Aragorn once did.

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Using his own blood to cross Fenrir off the list is so fucking extra on a character level but so deeply symbolic about what revenge gets you on another level

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I can’t believe Sam still has his fucking backpack from season 1.

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This hotel room is so ridiculous. These days they often seem to end up in ones which feel like they have a whole living room area to them as well as a bedroom - lots of floor space, and sofas and comfy chairs. Partially it’s because they’re often going to have other characters there with them, like, they NEEDED the space in 13x06.

This room is oppresively dark, though, and there’s something uncomfortable about that. Like, walls closing in around them.

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The conversation with Cas on the phone is so adorable. But it also speaks to miscommunication themes very well. Cas only has his end of the conversation to go on - his interpretation of what Dean says based on how he is predetermined to understand it based on his experience - and he hears Dean telling him off when Dean is just checking in and has been having a pretty quiet, domestically soft conversation with him. Getting annoyed with Sam confuses Cas into thinking Dean is annoyed with him. In this tiny microcosm of miscommunication, Dean can catch why Cas is hurt and what he has done to cause it - getting distracted from Cas and snapping at Sam when he should have been giving Cas more attention - but then he can backtrack and EXPLAIN to Cas that he wasn’t talking to him, and he didn’t mean for him to get hurt.

Now if only he could identify much larger scale miscommunication about much larger emotional issues :P It also shows it’s definitely on Dean’s side to make this clear, that Cas is the one at a blind spot where he hasn’t the resources to interpret correctly, which makes this a microcosm of 13x14, Glynn’s last episode, where he and Dean talked about why Cas had been brought back. Cas draws the incorrect conclusions there, and while Dean didn’t know the real answer, he had the RESOURCES to reassure Cas he was wanted, not needed, and perhaps they were just lucky and now they could all enjoy being a family together, while instead he let Cas run on with the being brought back for a purpose thing. (Because, of course, Billie told him he was brought back for a purpose and refused to let him die, moments before Cas was returned to Dean… WE have all the information. They do not.)

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“She tracked his essence, which, gross.” I always forget that I pick up my conversational tics from Dean, then I write them into Dean while doing fan fic and then think, I am making him sound way too feminine with these conversational tics, I should just delete theeese…

Anyway, Dean drawing the grossest conclusion from what Rowena is tracking. In a way based on the “Trickster loves babes” persona, he might not feel like he’s totally WRONG for making that conclusion :P But it’s his mind going to the grossest place immediately, as it usually does when there’s an innuendo about.

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Dean missed the magic fingers box up until this point which seems to indicate that he was so immediately into calling Cas he didn’t do his usual scope out. In 3x04 we see him zero in on that box in moments of entering the room, and he lovingly sets aside some quarters for it. Instead he’s discovered by accident they have a bed with broken magic fingers that just needs a kick to start going… Not that he has any time to enjoy it here. Given this is used to break the conversation up, I’d assume that’s scripted to be here and not a gag that appeared in the set and directing level. In any case the magic fingers are somewhat directly linked to  his own frustration levels (especially re: 2x13) and here he takes out his frustration on the bed and…

I’m not entirely sure what it means but given where he’s at it can’t be good :P It comes as a direct result of him taking out his frustration with physical annoyance, while in that mood of wanting to get things over and done with that has been making him feel stressed and anxious and his frustration is in the urgency of their mission and that he has no idea what’s happening in the AU when they aren’t there, but all their encounters with it end up with someone they love in horrible peril when he last got a glimpse >.>

It’s very possible this emotional beat is clearer by the end of the season.

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I still wonder if Gabriel waited for Dean to say “doesn’t want to be found” to make his entrace.

May be hurt but he’ll still wait for the opportune moment :P

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I was thinking the other night about how I made that massive post of all of Mary’s clothes in season 12, analysing them, and then she picked one last outfit in 12x23 and like… I have had no work to do on that front for an entire year. She must reek. Jack isn’t looking very good either :P

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Jack and Mary are oblivious to what “Balthazar” means to us - more dramatic irony in the name drop being one that for us is omg lol fun angel who like Gabriel has had a LOT of sex and done a similar arc of dropping off the map to do so… Here, he was still leading armies, as the persona that he had left behind by the time we met him post-faking his death. Whether that Balthazar lurks under the surface or not, with powerful archangels still in power, he dares not be anything other than what he was “meant” to be. It makes an interesting mirror to Gabriel, as he and Balthazar are clear personality mirrors in some ways re: fake your own death and go live the high life. Here he is just another general in Michael’s army and presumably now dead without ever being able to find his personality.

For Gabriel, in this episode, perhaps just more of a reminder of what he had originally run away from.

It makes you wonder because he ran so early in time, if the AU Gabriel ever returned - what would have drawn him out of hiding, if ever. Is he still cowardly posing as human or Trickster among the refugees? Or is he back where he “belongs” with the archangels, and has been playing the trumpet song of the apocalypse for them?

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I love Jack in this episode because he’s such a different version of Jack  yet again, as he grows and matures. My mum was like omg he’s a teenager this episode, and yeah, I think in his emotional maturity arc, that’s where he is. There was something still purely childish in his thinking in 13x09 and he was still sweet and innocent in 13x14 when doing shadow puppets. It was killing angels and getting involved in the fight at the end of that episode, of deciding he had to go after Michael, that began pushing him out of childish innocence by giving him a revelation that wasn’t personal or family, but one that lives of others rested on, and giving him a clear motive to go fight. Like Sam being 6 months old when it all came crashing down for him, for Jack it’s the same: his innocence ends there and he is drafted into the apocalypse war as its possible saviour.

But in this way, he GAINS a Mary at 6 mo while for Sam he LOSES a Mary at 6 mo. And now we see Jack and Mary’s dynamic where they are fighting together, and he’s briefing her on the latest fight. He’s brimming with confidence and excitement, an understandable arrogance about his powers which emotionally puts him in a similar place to Sam in season 4, being utterly certain of his path.

But importantly no one has manipulated Jack here, per se, and Mary is acting as a voice of reason to him rather than egging him on. His fight is necessary rather than motivated by revenge, and within Apocalpyse world they definitely have the purest motives. With no idea if they can or will leave, and a clear problem in front of them, a world that needs saving, this is something Mary and Jack were both in ideal emotional places to need before their arrival here, based off early Jack and Mary in season 12.

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Jack still talks somewhat simplicitically about emotion: “you’re not happy?” because they keep winning battles, why wouldn’t Mary be buoyed up by this and excited as he is about their prospects? She’s the one with years of experience and a human perspective, who is weighing things beyond black and whites of good and bad, win and lose. Jack is almost moving too fast, rescuing so many people that they don’t have the resources to deal with winning

“Why are they leaving?” he asks about the angels, and it’s his issue with not being wary enough and of measuring things in such absolutes, that gets them into trouble. They’re leaving because yes Michael is a lil to a lot scared of Jack, but it’s also a trap - there’s a nuance to it. He’s not so scared of Jack he’s just up and fleeing. It was a tactical retreat to catch him out… And playing into a blind spot of nuance that Jack really urgently needs to learn from.

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Seen a lot of comparisons to 12x12 and Cas on the sofa, but there’s a difference with Sam tending to Gabriel which seems to also play into the crypt scene dialogue repetition, in that it’s quick, not emotionally wrought, and Gabriel is already getting better and at the very least this wound will heal and stop bothering him eventually, and Sam’s just cleaned him up and put a bandage on it, and we come in after that, just catching the end of him doing the patching up. The wound is also on the other side, for what it’s worth. Like, yeah, it’s nice to see Sam tending to him, and this is one of those things where he put aside his issues with the Trickster back in the open of 5x08 in order to work with him, and years later, whatever they went through, Sam’s moved way past it because especially compared to what Lucifer put him through - called out in the recap - Sam’s own brain is the sort to genuinely begin to accept and try and understand that Gabriel seemed to want to help in his own twisted way right back in Mystery Spot, never mind that he very much DID step up for them in 5x19. Sam won’t hold grudges in the same way Dean does. AND since Dean was AFK in 13x18, Sam’s already spent a full episode of time longer with Gabriel, while he’s still very much an abstract concept to Dean.

(Still, combined with Sam being the one undoing the stitches on Gabriel’s mouth, I’m pretty sure fanservice plays into this, as much as Sam and Gabriel being the ones with a much longer history. I mean, to Sam, he’s like Dean in a way which has made sense to me since 11x08, that Sully was like Dean… And yeah I’m seeing those Speight links everywhere :P)

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Gabriel bluffing about rolling into town and going into the wrong poker game is basically a description of what actually happened to him. And when first watching I did think, lol, I bet that’s a half-bluff about something, and it turns out it was - it was just on a much bigger scale that the poker game was 8 years ago. Again, interesting for performing!Dean when it comes to bluffing half-truths and surface level aspects of personality and characterisation while a much deeper truth lies underneath. It’s extremely easy to lie when the lie is in fact the truth, but presented in a way which hides the real story. The macho hetero sounding bluff about what he was up to and taking from these guys hides the truth he took something much worse from them, and they’re as likely to hunt him as he is to have to hunt them for revenge, and he’s really only just staying on top of it by being motivated to kill them as they are for wanting to kill him.

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“You came here for R&R?” “This isn’t exactly the Riviera”   
pls picture my mum in outrage at this line

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There is something so deeply vulnerable below the surface as Gabriel asks for his grace. He is caught running around doing all sorts of nonsense that’s draining him, and not getting a chance to recharge it if he keeps getting hurt in the process. Also the fact he over-asks with several sentences of asking, while the silence on the other end and no immediate jumping to hand it to him is already telling him the worse news, that they don’t have it any more. It’s the lack of sharpness on Gabriel’s end, the fact he keeps talking into that silence instead of whip-sharp identifying they used the grace and mocking them for it, which really shows his vulnerability, because he used to run rings around them so easily.

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Ahh the motel has a poker chip theme. Yep, it’s all a gamble right now.

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Anyway, Gabriel clearly identifies that if they’re looking for him, used his grace up, etc, they’re wanting to take more grace, and open another rift, and at this point they do sort of want him as badly as Asmodeus did in the the sense that he’s a milk cow for grace for their schemes. He knows they’re not evil so he at least isn’t so freaked out he won’t sleep on the sofa in front of them with the plan to leave later (he didn’t see Dean abduct Kaia at gunpoint for the same endgoal earlier in the season) but he knows he has to leave and will not help them at this point, because there is one thing only they want from him. And he at least initially will take his chances elsewhere.

BECAUSE TRAUMA.

At least it’s on a lower level than Sam and Cas forcing grace at Gabriel’s mouth because that was wiiildly ooc for the both of them.

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The snooze on the sofa is also a direct comparison to Cas in 10x02, too ill and tired with no grace to do anything other than sleep

I think those and Cas in 5x22 are the only cases where we see angels sleep, all times when they’re frighteningly low on grace.

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Slepnir is the most hilarious side character in a long time. Just like. Hey I’m gonna munch on apples and carrots. You’ve got the cowboy lone wolf brother, the gay biker brother who is the only one doing a kinda Viking accent, and the foppish horse brother. Who even designed these characters :P

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We get another Jack zoom in on the base of operations, but while it follows a familiar pattern, we see the cage Lucifer then Mary were kept in now empty (the first warning that Kevin was not a prisoner or in trouble with Michael) and his base of operations is empty, his soldiers represented by the toy army men.

Which is a horrible metaphor but one that ties Cas and Dean together in a fascinating way. The angels are the toy soldiers, but so were Sam and Dean in the IRL version of the story to them, the one where in 1x03 Dean played with the lil army men with Lucas and broke our hearts, or in 11x08 we see Sam with them when he wanted to go join them on the hunt, and in 5x22 breaks Lucifer’s hold on Sam when he’s reminded of Dean and his relationship via the army man in the car, as a symbol of all they’ve gone through. Now in Apocalypse world, Michael represents his troops with the same icon, breaking the angels down into the same thing. Plastic toys to be moved across the map at his whim. It’s this hold that Balthazar, Gabriel and Cas all break free from to be their own angels with their own personalities.

It’s the reminder than in this world we still haven’t met AU Cas (maybe…?) and here he WOULD have just been another one of Michael’s toy soldiers, with Naomi poking them into line and no Dean to shake him free for good.

These toy soldiers are very much here for Cas and what they tell us about him. And what he is not.

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“It’s all empty” “are you sure?” “there’s a few angels guarding the perimeter” Jack, that’s… that’s not a good omen. If he was gone he’d be gone, no map, no sign of habitation, no angels left because there’d be nothing left to guard, and no reason for you to go there. He’s obviously worked out you can see what he’s up to because you’re SO effective at attacking him with foresight, which means the trap has to be bait enough for you to fall for it, but lose only a few angels in the defence.

Mary’s “are you sure” throws doubt on Jack’s analysis and it’s clear from their first scene that she’s got more practical concerns, so this next problem, they branch even further - Mary is now narratively set up as a voice of doubt and practical concerns to Jack, and Jack is making decisions, with Mary questioning his choices. Not in a bad way, she just wants to be careful, and Jack is the one rushing too eagerly into things. In 3 lines this is clear that Jack is making a mistake because Mary has asked if he’s SURE, meaning it’s up to him to have been sure in his assessment. His assessment is wrong, and it all spirals from there, as he’s the only one with the power to see the base and make the call if this emptiness is a bad omen or a good one.

Mary continues questioning it, and the other poor soldier, who points out Michael is scared of nothing. Jack uses this information to finalise the split - again yes Michael is scared but he’s not fleeing point blank, it’s more complicated than that. But Jack sees Michael fleeing and thinks, he’s scared of me. A deduction of over-confidence with this scene set up so the informed and rational voices working on a different level from Jack accidentally feed his confidence instead of talking him down and urging him to be careful.

“It could be a trap.” Mary doesn’t say outright that her gut is telling her it’s a trap. She doesn’t say it IS a trap and explain why it looks hinky. And this means Jack isn’t being questioned, he’s being ADVISED, as they have been saying in the interviews, he’s like the general or king of this army, and everyone is just an advisor. Mary doesn’t have an actual parental/grandparent connection where she can tell him, go to your room, and his powers have him a step out from everyone else. He’s carrying the burden of a chosen magical leader in that sense, where his word is final and because he has the powers no one else does, because he’s the one who can take the fight to Michael, he makes the decisions.

It takes him free of all of his other parental figures in the sense that TFW all in some ways are manipulated like Sam in season 4 into accidentally into that mindset, which is his close comparison, or otherwise feel like an attack dog or tool, as Cas and Dean do, where someone is controlling him. He has to make ALL these choices for himself and learn for himself, from his own choices, because there’s NO ONE who holds him accountable in the sense of being able to control or even discipline him.

he’s… good!Joffrey. He has a moral compass and a sense of wanting to be good, but he’s still dangerously elevated into a position of consequences and hurt springing from his actions often on a base emotional level. He doesn’t WANT people to get hurt (like, the primary opposite function of Joffrey’s internal processes :P), but now he is leading this group of people, he’s a confident teen mindset guy in a position of ultimate power who has very little grasp of some very very fundamental basics, which makes him dangerous in his own way. The consequences of his actions have been a thing since 12x19, when he acted in several ways utterly instinctively and free of consequence, where it was a problem for the adults - for Cas, his father - to deal with and even face the consequences of. Mary not having a strong control over Jack, as emotionally close as they might have become, means she can’t tell him no, and she can’t discipline him.

I don’t think Jack has ever been disciplined, except perhaps that one scene at the end of 13x02 where Dean comes in and takes the knife away from him, but that wasn’t exactly NORMAL. Dean, emulating John wayyyy too much in the open of the season, was the only person who could have disciplined Jack, but he would have gone too far in another variant of this storyline, which we already saw with Dean and Ben, probably hence not re-living it as we have already seen how this goes for Dean when he has a younger self to deal with, and ultimately all things serve the main characters’ arcs, hence it being Cas and Sam’s turn to have a smol nougat ward. Mary is the last hope Jack really has of firm but KIND discipline, then, and it’s clear that in the same way Joffrey was never reigned in until it was too late, now Jack is here, seeming adult, emotionally teenaged, and dangerous to these people because he’s not just an untested leader, but he’s emotionally wobbly because he’s like, six or seven MONTHS old, and he has just not experienced enough to be a strong leader, no matter how kind he is.

So the others in the camp exchange worried looks, and Mary looks at Jack, and says nothing. Jack’s promise of keeping them safe is projected to Mary, and he DOES protect her, but he’s too single-minded on just protecting her, still in a base family sort of zone, and not yet a Leader of Men zone.

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Sam is wondering about Gabriel’s grace levels, and what he’s doing running around getting hurt. Dean doesn’t care - he wants to keep Gabriel here, and to him the task is over, they probably hustle him out of town and back to the bunker to do the spell for all he cares.

Gabriel starts awake when Dean says this, and possibly has been low-key aware of what’s around him for a while, but pretends to be alarmed and like he has no clue where he is if he HAS heard their conversation, so that the sudden waking and confusion hides what he overhears. Again, a very convenient entry to the conversation.

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“Oh, right. You.” He settles back into the sofa, looking annoyed, and clearly posturing in some way. He still has a layer up - you can see he’s expressing two things at once, at a most basic level being flippant about their presence but also deeply uncomfortable, because he’s still trapped with them. Like in 12x10, when Ishim threatened that an angel banishing would kill Cas, it’s possible he’s weak enough at this point he CAN’T fly away, and is trapped with them for reals.

You know, 2 guys who mean well but need him for his grace

“We need your help.”

“not a big joiner.”

Dean phrases it as saving the world again

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The best part of knowing Speight directed this is his jump when the guys kick in the door. He’s either a marvellous actor, or said to scare him :P

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“Raspberries” he’s stil playing games

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I love how Dean is like “the hell are you guys?” the immediately switches to Gabriel, seeing an easier answer and also that the guys are really not into answer - “the hell are these guys?”

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Dean getting whipped at with a cat o nine tails has so many fascinating implications.

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The wooden sword passing through clothes is hilarious but it’s Gabriel so we’ll let him have it

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And Gabriel saves Sam when Dean can’t, because he was distracted. Gabriel’s dual wielding katanas, determined to kill each demigod with the correct one.

Gabriel and Sam are framed together, post-fight

“You’re not going anywhere,” Dean says, always more ready to disbelieve or assist Gabriel, and raises the handcuffs, revealing that, yes, they’re as bad as Asmodeus in the sense that whatever shit Gabriel has going on, even if this is just to pin him down to get some answers out of him, they’re going to bind him because they CAN and they’re the ones in the position of power, the ones who are hunting him while he hunts the norse gods, and no help whatsoever towards him.

They’re going to shackle him to the gambling chip room divider - he came to them on a slim hope they had grace, and the gamble didn’t pay off.

-

Thinking of gambles not paying off, we cut to Jack’s lil army storming the keep

-

“All clear,” the guy says, next to the huge Jesus. God has abandoned this land.

-

“I really hate this place.” More acknowledgements of trauma, of remembering being tortured and the characters reacting to that in rational ways.

Again, one of those major complaints about the show that it doesn’t respond to the character’s trauma, and while I think on a mytharc level you often can see that characters are responding to trauma and people aren’t just analysing it deep enough to see where the links are TO that trauma, or missing signs of it and complaining it wasn’t built up and came out of nowhere, it’s absolutely true that in a day to day way about their jobs, there often are moments where the characters are forced to swallow down their trauma to the point that the writing truly neglects what they might have been through in similar situations unless it’s MEANT to be about something. I suppose this is a cheat that it does seem to be a theme of the season in the sense that on a mytharc level trauma and grief and PTSD is 100% powering their actions, but they are doing better this season in showing plausible reactions and remembering when characters have been harmed before.

(Except Buckleming and where they wanted Sam to be sassy and fun around Lucifer.)

-

Honestly unless Jack sends his vision out to where Michael’s armies are, he doesn’t even know for sure if this map truly represents Michael’s movements, but he immediately takes it for granted that this picture is the truth.

-

KEV

I am so so sorry buddy

-

“He’s a traitor!”  
“I’m a prophet of the lord, I’m serving God”

It sounds like he’s bargaining with Mary and Jack rather than responding to the accusation but either way it shows two ways of branding him. The soldier is correct: Kevin WILL betray them, and has already been acting against humanity’s interest. But Glynn reminds us why: that Kevin’s entire purpose has been uprooted in this world as in our own, and we remember in 7x21 how compelled he was to the tablets. How he has been forced into this duty. How with no guidance other than being snatched out of his life and made to do it, whether he resisted to start with or not, he has been completely broken to this purpose, and now his only identity is as the prophet of the lord, no longer able to be a regular human, and in Michael’s world that means he IS a traitor to humanity, but forced to be so by God’s will, and in this world there’s more like Michael’s will…

“You serve Michael!”  
“I didn’t have a choice!”

Like Donatello, Kevin complains that he never believed in anything except science. Prophets are not drawn by their faith or any inherent holiness. It’s a random, horrible lottery and in this modern age, the people picked often are completely unsuited, spiritually, to the job. In this world as in the main one, Kevin’s story is a complete tragedy, because it involves his autonomy being utterly taken from him in exchange for powers and being jerked around by anyone who can make use of them.

“But God chose me. What does that even mean?!”

I think Kevin’s hurt is real, I think he truly does believe Michael is awful, that he has hurt so many people. But an abuser’s bargain at the end, that he will see his mom again, Kevin in season 8 a dark early Carver era omen of the mother theme which evenually led to Mary’s return, and patterns that her story has followed, is almost completely helpless to resist taking the deal that also had Adam turn on them for Michael. Adam, Kevin and Dean already followed a pattern of lost boys with lost moms, and Kevin just doubled down on all of it. He will do ANYTHING to see his mom again.

(see also: Rowena last episode.)

-

Kevin then tells them that there is a spell to open the rift - in the south, which does finally corroborate the toy soldiers. I hope and assume Kevin is giving them real intel, while Michael had left him behind as a bomb and hoped that it would deal with the Jack problem. Whether Kevin blabbed or not was supposed to be irrelevant.

-

Gabriel makes a comparison directly between them and Asmodeus, locking him up.

He then tells them it’s not a fun story, what’s going on, but in a mo we’re going to have Dean enjoying it a great deal.

-

Oh also not like there isn’t a parallel between these “god-begotten monsters” and the archangels, with Loki as Chuck. Because of course Gabriel has father issues, of course a John parallel is a Chuck parallel, and of course Gabriel is working his way through killing the children of this father/mother god that begat these children before heading for the big guy. of course there’s 3 children, with Gabriel, the one most in the image of the father, the final “son” in the combination.

-

Because ohohoho is Gabriel most the one like his father, no matter how Michael WISHES he was like the divine image of God in the way Dean plays into the John performance, there’s “God” and there’s “Chuck” and the Michael father issues are with “God” and the Gabriel father issues are with “Chuck”… I think part of Lucifer’s problem in season 11 was that his issues were with the blown up story of “God” the almighty father, and instead he found Chuck.

-

Okay, Sam mentions the pornstars, making Dean smile, moments before Gabriel starts telling the story. There’s no way this isn’t some sort of projection because the way Gabriel’s telling it, the porn stars were implicit. Meaning that Sam and more importantly Dean, can see this image of the perfect story Gabriel is telling them about what happened to him. Gabriel leaves out the porn stars, Dean complains, Gabriel adds them.

This is possibly all Speight fucking with us, but I’m 100% happy to let the self-proclaimed prophet of Destiel keep doing that. But there is rather more footage between the buff male porn star and the end of Gabriel’s story - the camera actually cuts off when he’s showing himself naked and about to get very comfy with the ladies, and Dean is smiling away, and Sam interjects.

Honestly, I’m starting to think that Dean has watched Casa Erotica 13 a couple more times than we’ve seen on screen and Gabriel is his second favourite porn star >.> I KNOW it’s the whole thing to ship Sabriel, but Dean and Gabriel have a vibe. A weird weird vibe, but they’d probably fuck if circumstances were different, and it would be WILD and there’d be like 8 people in the bed.

-

Oh, yeah, also, Fenris has a bolo tie when he’s all dressed up. Hehe. Weird cowboy wolf god. :’)

I love how bizarre they all are

-

This is another retcon with a hilariously narrow window. This took place between 5x19 and 5x22, and posthumously adds one more dumbass thing that Asmodeus did. Literally while Lucifer was gaining power, ready to strike the final blows of the apocalypse, that dumbass bought Gabriel, supposedly dead archangel, in order to… what? What was he planning on doing with him? Was he even HELPING with the apocalypse? Was he chilling in his plantation house waiting for it all to kick off then he’d stroll in and help like hey Lucifer, look what I got for you?

Anyway Gabriel was out for maybe like 2 days from 5x19 and this drunken snooze with his babes was his first night away from it all, and TFW probably hadn’t even made their next moves or were just getting into the drama of 5x20, and he’s being loaded first class back to America in a freight box, and then, what Asmodeus goes to pick up his delivery and off in the background Lucifer’s being thrown in the pit (postage is hell, okay? 2 weeks to deliver a crate of pissed off archangel?) and Asmodeus is like, well the apocalypse is suddenly over, what in tarnation am I supposed to do with you now?

And for 8 years, proceeds to accomplish…………… nothing

-

Dumbass

-

I love how Sam had snooped in Gabriel’s trunk and seen the 4 swords, so he knew to ask that question.

-

Gabriel calls Loki “the man with the plan” and “the architect of - ” words which align him again with Chuck, as the Creator and the one with the divine plan overall for the world.

-

“Jacob’s right, leaving his plans here is too sloppy” Yeah, NOW someone is questioning this. Because they are seeing what Jack saw in his vision but Jack didn’t have the inner resources to question it, so he had to take the entire group there, for the adults to work out that this is fishy

-

“I can go. Right now.” Once they have even an inkling of where Michael is, Jack wants to rush off and surprise and kill him. Just like Dean wanted to rush to the end and kill Loki.

-

At least Jack is being a reverse Hamlet too - he’s not procrastinating killing his uncle. He’s getting the job done.

-

Now Mary is saying “we SHOULD wait” because she has all the info, but she wasn’t speaking up to Jack earlier. Not blaming her - just that this scenario is more war table, more involved more urgent, so they can talk to Jack with more certainty and urgency, as well as arguing among themselves about the issues - like the guy suggesting Michael should go and be someone else’s problem, and Mary pointing out that’s 7 billion new people for him to menace.

-

But Mary has to negotiate Jack’s impetuous nature for a day for Bobby to get there with more intel and more men, to stop him rushing off and doing something he shouldn’t. Begging him emotionally for a day before he makes his bad decision is not the best place to be in as an advisor, and Jack’s emotional state still plays a huge part in his decisions, whether he feels more mature or not. He’s at the adult’s table, but his whims are still worrying and need managing.

-

I love the cut from Jack managing not to be too frustrated about having to wait a day and giving in to his advisor’s words, to a shot of Dean in about the same place on the screen, taking an annoyed swing from his flask. Another sign that he’s still only barely holding it together at the moment. People were surprised by this but he’s been in a terrible place most of the season - his good place was only from 13x06>9 and it wasn’t exactly perfect then either, it was just not driven by horror and grief to such a degree.

Anyway this next scene, he’s frustrated with Gabriel for running away, not helping them with Lucifer, and for being distracted with this which he thinks is “not important”

-

Listen you can’t convince me that Glynn wasn’t subtly hinting that Loki disappeared off to Asgard in the MCU during this time he was dealing with his own family drama :P

-

Gabriel saying he won’t join their band of merry men. First time through I was convinced he was going to say band of brothers because lol Speight. Instead it’s a Robin Hood reference. Which makes a degree of sense with their lives.

-

Dean dismissing his trauma as unimportant causes Gabriel to snap and have a really great speech about how Asmodeus tormented him, and how he’s owed this revenge. At this point his real rage comes through, that terrifying Gabriel face we very rarely see but underneath the Trickster facade, he is still an archangel, and here we have him proclaiming that everyone who had a hand in debasing him like that will pay for it. And Sam and Dean are forced to confront what they would do for revenge in a situation like this - with Sam firmly agreeing with Gabriel, because he too wants to do this to Lucifer. Dean has a grimmer view on revenge, as he was the one in particular who killed Azazel on behalf of his family. “Not going to change any of that. Probably not even going to make you feel better.”

Revenge is explored so much in this show and even in season 1 there was a strong thread of if revenge was worth it if you lose out on stuff in the process, like family or your sense of self or your own life. Now Dean is like 11-12 years down the line and he KNOWS it doesn’t help, that it takes everything from you and leaves nothing in its place. But at the same time he’s counsilled many people that despite that, they have to do it and get there themselves. Which is horrifying >.>

-

I hurt for Dean a lot all the time

-

Anyway Gabriel will end up there but I guess the message is the clarity that comes after.

-

“We all have our demons” - I mean, the original revenge arc was against “the demon”

-

Sam immediately starts strategising how Gabriel can go about his revenge, so Dean pulls him out of the room to talk about it, and tell Sam how it’s a total waste of time.

And Dean accuses Sam of getting really invested in the “kill bill” story that Gabriel is telling. Picking up on the narrative of revenge stories, vendettas for catharsis, stories which exist only to show someone exacting their revenge on everyone who ever hurt them.

Sam might not have told Dean everything he told Rowena about Lucifer, but Dean still knows the broad strokes and they’re enough.

-

Sam strategises more, and makes it sound like sure I would immediately attempt to get revenge on Lucifer, BUT despite all appearances about my investment in the story this is just strategising that we help Gabriel, he helps us.

Hmm.

-

Thunder and lightning on the army of plastic soldiers, and Jack staring down at this map from above, with Jesus at his right shoulder.

He’s, um. Probably not the new God of this place.

-

Much.

-

Especially as that entire scene was just those shots. Jack in contemplation of the world set before him, and his place in it.

-

Gabriel strolls in dressed up in his leather, but with a Dean-like Henley shirt underneath the jacket.

-

“Dump town”  
*insert mother complaining*

-

I love seeing Loki at work though :P

“Cinderella treatment” but then the guitar is playing instead of “bippity boppity boo” :P

-

“Everyone knows you don’t take on the big bad from the jump!”

JACK, LISTEN TO YOUR OTHER, WISEST, UNCLE

This is also great meta commentary in general for the writing of the show :P

-

I know Sam pulled on that heartstring in 13x18 but it’s still weird to me how Gabriel is Jack’s uncle, who’s Cas’s son, who’s married to Dean, brother to Sam, meaning that Gabriel is now a direct in-law to them instead of whatever abstract concept he was in the apocalypse. Their interactions with him are like trying to cajole a reticient cousin to come to a family get together.

-

Anyway the whole meta commentary on the Kill List. Gabriel being adorably meta, but also clinging to the narrative pattern of a vendetta movie, the emotional catharsis offered by it. The style, the flair… he wants to get it all right so it looks and feels the best it possibly can.

Dean calls it stupid, because, again, like the wooden swords, it looks ridiculous and childish on the surface. Gabriel snatches back the list, like NO SEVEN YEARS OF TORTURE.

This is how he copes. The surface level he makes so that he can even suffer through each day, and THAT is where Dean’s shell comes from. His season 7 fake it til you make it attitude. How in 13x05 even the things that appealed most to Dean’s performing, coping layer, were no longer enough to get him through the day.

-

Every movement of Speight’s face is an invitation to write hundreds of words, and this is why I’ve always loved him as an actor, but the way he says “peachy” and smiles at Dean in between annoyance, then it all dropping off again as he gives the orders is particularly great face acting :P And as he talkes through it and gets to “easy peezy like a breezy” he’s all joy and bounce again. Like this darkness in him was never there. Despite the fact they’re heading off to revenge.

-

And as he sets off, Jack approaches Mary and says, he did say he’d wait but he wants to go NOOOOW mom

-

“You CAN’T” Mary finally gives Jack an order, trying to pull him back from this before it’s too late. Jack reacts like she’s undervaluing his power, not thinking he’s the strongest evar and he can do anything, but she says we don’t know his power, which just makes Jack say yeah but he doens’t know MY power. I’m so strong! Mary has to navigate through this, acknowledging he’s strong but it’s not the be all and end all

look, remember back in 13x09 when I was talking about Jack representing some forms of toxic masculinity? This is another one - the boyish mindset of being the best and perfect, the woman doing the emotional labour, having to manage him so he doesn’t hurt himself or others. Considering my experiences of guys aged around 18 at university in their first year when first left to fend for themselves… A root of a lot of evils if they haven’t learnt retraint or respect >.>

technically this is a normal part of parenting, but with a properly established mom dynamic, and these lessons coming naturally at a much younger age. The problem is that Jack is an adult at the adult table, but still acting this way. Not his FAULT at all, he’s just too young, and needs to learn lessons that shape him as a person, and unfortunately, this is the classroom and it’s NOT toy soliders for him, it’s real men in a real army who can really die. That theoretically may lead him to being a just and wise God that behaves as benevolently as Jack wishes to be. But in the mean time, the young god has his issues.

-

Mary pulls on her own experience, how her own mess ups and mistakes. She ran in blind to a deal which she has had to regret over and over. The subtext of everything around Mary flowing back to that deal

-

“You can’t help them if you’re dead! And I can’t lose another boy.” Kim Rhodes NAILED this emotion in 13x10 re: Jody and Claire, but it’s a nice callback here. That episode had a whole arc to her reaction to Claire’s potential death, while Mary really only gets this outburst here so I shouldn’t compare. Just. Berens made me cry a lot about that :P

Anyway for Jack as much as Claire it’s a novelty that a parental figure seems to care that much about them that it turns out all their motivations and attempts to seemingly control and restrict them haven’t been about their ability, but their safety. Jody doesn’t stop Claire hunting because she doesn’t think she can do it. Mary knows Jack probably COULD melt Michael on the spot but that doens’t stop her fearing what could happen to him while he tries.

Jack being the 6 mo Sam replacement, as I wrote a lot about in my Xmas fic and for my 13x14 notes, now comes into play with Mary saying she can’t lose another boy. Jack is the inverse - a baby adult - of her finding adults who were her babies - and his emotional needs as an infant being fill a gap for her in an incredibly neat jigsaw puzzle piece way that I think will help a lot long term with her being around Sam and Dean, that she can nurture a baby, hopefully through Jack’s rapid personal development, and whether she lets him go or this reaches a point where he’s more adult inside and she’s been through it with him, they’re all a lot more comfortable. In any case as I said, I think they held off on Mary and Jack meeting until he was 6 mo and that was deliberate. And sure enough, now here he is as a spot where Mary’s “lost” children were, filling that very specific gap.

This line has its connections to 12x12 and her adult men boys as well - TFW in their current form - but I think that despite the overlap between these two lines, this is the subtext of where she and Jack are and what he represents losing, and she’d say this line regardless of what she thought about TFW.

-

“You won’t,” Jack says, and picks his words very carefully as he puts his hand on Mary’s shoulder - “For all of you.” No need to clarify if you pick the correct words to start with. And Jack doesn’t SAY the wrong words. His dialogue is precise and entirely calculated to what he currently knows.

The shoulder touching, he’s learned and mimicked from Cas or Dean or both, I guess

-

Oh no, Kevin.

He’s got a self-destruct like the angels that were killing themselves “for Castiel” and the first thing Kevin says is “Michael”… Even Gadreel killed himself for Heaven and the other angels. But Kevin is doing this for Adam reasons - reasons for himself. Michael has had one last cruel exploit of Kevin’s broken psyche, that he can kill him and get a new prophet and in the mean time Kevin uses this power to blow them up just so he can see his mom again and escape the cruelty, his one way to get away from this abuse, and yet it’s at his own cost, but for Michael’s ends.

Michael is the worst, FYI

-

Mary breaks our hearts saying Heaven is just memories, not real. Incidentally, I’ve seen some people complain Mary values the heaven memories of Sam n Dean more than the real ones but she is missing that she had them there when she was ALIVE with them, and lost that too, and all the potential of the years after, as much as anything. But this is growth away from any chance she was just talking about Heaven memories, and it’s important that the reconciliation is between Sam and Dean over real matters.

Anyways, ow.

-

Then Jack makes the last crucial error - that Kevin can’t kill him, but that’s never been the plan. It was always to demoralise him and kill everyone else and take away Jack’s support. Probably lure him into a trap to rush off to try and kill Michael in revenge without anyone to tell him not to do it. We all know the story (his uncle is off playing it in the other screen).

All he can do is protect Mary - only Mary - in the split second he has left to react, and so Michael gets a partial win. But a partial win is enough that this at least will be a lesson for Jack rather than his undoing… I hope. He didn’t lose Mary, and she’s the one who he has based his entire moral compass on based on how Sam and Dean orient themselves by her.

-

Meanwhile: ridiculous hotel nonsense, and that damn carrot. The hotel manager paying no attention to this.

The parallel to Sam and Dean as hired heavies for Gabriel is abundantly clear, though they have their own personalities as they stand there listening to elevator music.

-

Gabriel says “take out the bodyguards, take out the bystanders” - that’s the great value for human life we’ve always treasured him for :P

He reminds them how a revenge narrative works, but then Dean’s gonna go try and play off-book to protect Sam, hopefully avoid their archangel juice can getting killed, and speed the whole thing up so they can go back to their rescue mission.

-

“I want my beautiful face to be the last thing they see” - which is also Loki’s face.

-

“Big bros, right? Aaalways think they know best.” This is a very Gabriel line and I actually don’t think it was meant manipulatively towards Sam despite how the exact same intonation in another episode would be exactly that. It’s sort of more wry. But it does carry heavy implications towards Dean’s actions, and at the end of the episode Sam will call Dean out on that, from the POV of Dean feeling like he always knows best, and Dean will have to explain why he’s really been acting this way. It’s very much a little brother perspective that Gabriel says this to Sam, who reacts to it as such.

-

Loki playing into the Loki facade while Dean confronts him.

“So you’re Dean Winchester.” “And you’re the annoying god that we’re wasting our time trying to kill.”

It’s the same as “some random demon” re: Barthamus at the beginning of the season, also by Glynn, and probably similar intent to show Dean’s mood towards random think they’re powerful supernatural beings namedropping him like they know everything. But at the same time, here especially, he has no emotional investment to kill Loki except that he’s just here and getting in the way of what Dean really wants.

-

Loki has a gruffer voice than Gabriel and I find that hilarious

-

Loki tries to convince Dean that he has a just reason to be pissed off with Gabriel but he’s punishing him for the choices his own father made. “Why was my father there in the first place?” that was something that happened because of choices Gabriel’s father made, and so these two bitter sons with the same face are now vendetta-ing each other, along with the creepy made you in my image father son imagery going on with the faces between the two of them

I mean, Glynn did her research and it shows, so this is deliberate misinterpretation on his part to get to the vendetta. Gabriel didn’t even call the convention, and thought it was a stupid idea.

-

God those lollipops. These two love their custom cases.

-

“I’m sure you understand” (re: awful fathers) “What would you do for your father?” *Dean stabs him*

You know I was actually feeling disappointed most about Gabriel’s return that he’d not get pointlessly stabbed for us any more since it happened in every other episode he was in up to 13x13, so I am delighted that Glynn finally shook some sense back into the show and had at least someone with Gabriel’s face get pointlessly stabbed for us. I guess it’s the one that defies the rule so that we have closure and can move on from Gabriel getting stabbed.

I say, very very very very over-optimistically.

Oh anyway yeah, bad fathers. Low hanging fruit for Dean but again, it’s still true, it plays into the “how far would you go for your family?” theme that’s been haunting the season, and the fact this season has been entirely about fathers is pretty ominous for some sort of John-related reckoning.

-

*Rich runs into a scene where Rich is waiting for him, while Rich directs it*

The best Dick on Dick on Dick scene on the show

Yeah I know he made that joke but I am trying to recapture the magic of my own first thoughts a week late :P

I mean I had like 4 distinct personal thoughts throughout the entire thing because I was WIPED OUT but that was one of them

-

“Mess with the real Trickster, get the real tricks.” I think Loki is awesome, FYI. He’s clearly more powerful than Gabriel, even when Gabriel was running around fully powered, at least when it comes to trickery. Like, their personal limits of magic are just tuned a certain way, and when it comes to trickery, one of them is built for it and one was just turning his hand for a laugh, and enjoying that archangel power could in its own way make a near enough equivalent to what a norse god could do. I like the implication that there are always limits, rules as Billie would say. Things that make sense and things that just don’t. If you’re gonna introduce the real Loki, why not make him better at this than Gabriel? After all, it’s his actual job :P

-

Gabriel throws aside Slepnir’s wooden sword because he would GENUINLEY rather fight Loki fist to fist than go at him with a weapon that WOULD kill him but isn’t narratively RIGHT. Dean might have messed his story up a bit, but he’s still going to hit as many of the beats as he can of what he planned.

I know we call him Extra a lot but in a way this transcends it, that Gabriel is almost bound to the rules of a story in a way… Chuck is his father and Chuck is the novellist God and Gabriel may not be a writer as far as we’ve seen but he DOES have a strong affinity for TV Tropes and playing your part.

-

Gabriel being mocked for thinking he’s a poor innocent victim while being flung into and breaking a picture frame is exactly what happened to Rowena in Glynn’s episode 12x11 where she flipped Rowena into a sympathetic character for good.

-

I mean Rowena’s story with those witches is very similar to what happened to Gabriel with these guys.

-

Loki is truly horrifying, but in a raging, unhinged way which is nothing like the cold, bitter anger that snaps out of Gabriel sometimes. But they both seem like ancient, aloof creatures. Look. Rich is incredible. I loves him.

He beat himself up on camera for us.

-

Loki is both a son and father which is interesting just because he can play a few metaphorical levels, but with Dean he justifies it mostly about Odin. With Gabriel, he is raging mostly about how Gabriel has killed his sons, and this is where it flips to him being that father figure. Gabriel looks younger, thinner, trimmer, in a henley and leather jacket, while Loki is in a tight old fashioned suit that makes him bulky, mature, a generation above Gabriel in a way, though Gabriel is certainly older than him on the SPN timeline.

It’s like Jack - certain characters age in different ways emotionally, and Gabriel has gone a long long long long looooooong way as a teenager, just as Dean carried an inner child for such a long time and goes through a lot of maturity arcs, and is still somehow barely scraping adulthood on his inner self in many ways, despite sometimes feeling looking older than CHUCK when he contemplates the woes of the universe on his shoulders.

-

When we talk about truly ancient souls :P

-

Dean slides Gabriel the sword a la 9x06

“Of course. Of COURSE you would need someone to swoop in and save your pitiful ass”

It’s called a lesson in team work you fucking knob

-

“You’re a joke” OOOOOOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoOooooOooooh

Now Gabriel has the furious wrathful eyes on. While playing the camera angle that makes him look young enough to be his own son compared to Loki smushed up against the wall and shot from below with his face all scrunched up

-

“You live for pleasure and you stand for nothing. And in the end, that’s exactly what you’ll die for.”

This feels like it isn’t foreshadowing so much as offering a script to be flipped, Cain style (more father figures delivering pronouncements to their wayward sons, moments before said son kills them and takes their face) but the question is, will Gabriel standing for something just means he dies for a good cause at long last, or will he LIVE for a cause?

I still want prodigal son Gabriel in Heaven, but I want him to WANT to go there, and I feel like he needs a lot more work to get there, and there’s always a chance for the show to kill him because how much of this is borrowed time to wring a more elaborate character arc out of him and how much is this Gabriel falling into a Cas or Crowley-esque long term hang out on the show?

-

But “you first” and Gabriel kills Loki and claims his face as his own. Now this is a Dean killing Cain sort of moment; Gabriel knows all of Loki’s tricks. He’s learned to be him. It’s not JUST that he continues on, but Loki was a father figure to him as well, and he partied hard with Loki’s sons as if he was one of them. He identified as Loki for thousands of years and lived it up on his behalf.

Beyond that, Loki can mature and grow and he’s learning a lesson about adulthood here - about facades and putting aside being LIKE your father figure in order to get by, and for that he has to claim this face as entirely his own and make the identity that goes behind it all his own, on his own terms, for his own reasons. To work out what he DOES stand for and what he would at least earnestly TRY to die for, no tricks to avoid having to ACTUALLY die for it, like he did in 5x19.

-

I mean, they have to now convince us with a much much stronger character arc, that if Gabriel dies for something, then this time he truly meant it, and he has truly died for it, and now no one will question it at all.

-  
Like 13x06 the cowboy music continues after the story is over, but this time deadly serious.

-

Oh Nougat.

The first shot of him looking up is at the cross-shaped window, as if he is appealing to the higher power, and pans across another before it ever pans down to the dead soliders. And then we have the image of him with Mary in  his lap, the reverse of that famous image of Mary holding Jesus in her lap. Behind Jack on the door we know there’s the symbol of Jesus, which we saw when he spread his wings around Mary.

-

His look is just, what have I done? Because once again he rushed in and people died. And he still has so much to learn, and Mary was right. And now, I hope, they will work together well.

-

I love that Sam takes the wooden swords and throws them in the trunk. Dean took the swords Gog and Magog had, which means they’re really building up an arsenal on Glynn’s oversight. :D God-touched and god-killing weapons.

-

Gabriel is reflecting. He stands with his head halo’d by a noticeboard.

-

Another shot that makes him look TRULY tiny as well. He’s the director and he’s already implied he can kick someone a foot taller than him in the nose with fun camera work so I think this is the humble pie he’s pretending to have at the end of the episode :P

-

I’m sorry, I have literally no lines between Speight and Loki and Gabriel and The Trickster. They’re all just… that guy.

-

Anyway he says thanks, and after this moment of reflection, he HAS learned the lesson about teamwork, and announces that he’s on their side and up for the mission by asking what the plan is for their big strike against other world Michael.

of course they’re surprised, but he says a deal is a deal, fair enough, but also that tricks are for kids, which is a joke and pun on Trix ceral apparently (brer rabbit trickster symbolism, or Bugs Bunny comes to mind after the carrot munching earlier :P) but in any case, when it comes to Gabriel’s adulthood arc… I mean he and Jack appear to have hit adulthood within the exact same minute of each other, despite thousands of years run up on one end and 7 months on the other :P

-

Sam checks how revenge felt, because he has never got a satisfying revenge. I remember him asking Eileen how it felt, right after confronting Lucifer again for the first time in ages in 11x11, and she said that it felt like just another hunt. Now Gabriel says “Swell, Sam.” He’s not like, open book honest now, despite a probable maturity and teamwork leap forwards in behaviour. He’s still saying one thing and meaning another, and I think they both know it, though he’s leaving it to Sam’s discretion to read that in him.

Sam is still contemplating going after Lucifer, and I think he can’t know for sure how it feels until he kills Lucifer himself.

I’m glad after a lot of early contenders, if Lucifer is gonna be stabbed, I really really hope that perhaps the show is leaning towards San being able to do it one day.

-

I hope on day is “like, literally today” because I still have 13x21 to watch and I live in eternal anticipation that Lucifer is anticlimactically stabbed in every episode he’s in :P

-

Anyway, sad looks from Gabriel, but he goes and gets in the car.

Very sad Jack, mourning yet more disasters.

-

“It’s my fault. I said I’d protect them.” Yeah but you were only looking at Mary when you said it and not thinking big enough :(

I think behind him all the army men have been knocked off the altar, as a further sign of losing their men, from when Jack had been surveying the map like Michael might have done in the exact same spot.

Mary tries to reassure him that they’ll prepare and keep fighting, but Jack is despairing, saying what’s the point if he can’t keep people safe.

I think that’s too far down one end but he hopefully will bounce back a little… In the mean time taking that same sentence less mournfully, he needs to apply, there is no point to fighting if he can’t keep his men safe, and that he CAN and SHOULD go fight, but only when he plans and does his very best to ensure the safety of the people that he leads.

-

Dean pouring himself a drink, with the lid of the decanter beside him - the camera catches it at an angle where it directly flips upside down the table, another map of the world that Sam and Dean sit around while plotting their own moves - it’s almost like Dean’s got a little up is down bubble universe beside him. Like the AU is resting on him, or haunting him.

-

I love that line implying Sam’s just come from a Bunker full of Gabriel, Rowena and Cas.

I mean if they all stick around with Team Bunker this year’s Christmas fic is going to be pretty wild.

-

And Sam takes the time to call Dean out on Big Brother Knows Best

-

how is this their life that Sam says “since we opened up a rift” and just casually gestures behind him into the library

-

Anyway it’s great on him to identify Dean’s negative and self-destructive behaviours but they can only get so far when they can’t identify root problems, and in Dean’s case, aren’t willing to. Which means this escalates in a pretty awful direction, exposing their own issues bubbling under the surface. Dean unable to bear losing Sam again when the circumstances are leaning this way. And with season 8 in the background of this season, the 8x23 scenario ominously lurking potentially somewhere, where Sam had to do it because he felt he couldn’t let Dean down, right now he feels SIDELINED, not that Dean is protecting him, but that Dean doesn’t trust him, that Sam is a little kid. And that’s the horrible crossroads they’re at. Dean protects Sam because he can’t lose him, Sam feels the overbearing parental side of it that has been forced on them since their childhood where Dean isn’t JUST protecting him but also carries the double face of himself and of John, and not killing off the John face and taking on his own face… Sam’s only going to feel the pressure to not let Dean down, to feel like Dean is treating him like a child, to be trapped in this same cycle they’ve been in a long ass time, because on his own part, he latches harder onto Dean as the response to what Dean does to protect him. A push pull neither of them can resolve without outside help.

-

Dean sharing that he has his own trauma stemming from 5x22 and specifically having to watch Sam’s death, is legitimately groundbreaking and that’s horrifying in its own way that he’s never been able to express how much that messed him up, and he’s still skirting around saying it.

-

“I don’t care about what happens to me. Never really have.” but you DO and that’s the big deep down horrible dark secret you have. That you think you’re selfish because just sometimes you dream of having things for yourself. A Fortress of Dean-itude. Some people you want to experience in a different way. A trip to the beach. Things you want for yourself, to do yourself, to have for yourself, that don’t necessarily include Sam, that don’t necessarly EXCLUDE Sam, but in your life, you can’t ask for them.

-

And that line is so horrifying for Sam, that his reaction is to latch on harder, to see Dean’s despair without being able to see he’s the cause of it in some deep down way where Dean needs to let go of Sam, and so he spirals further - calls Dean on his bullshit of wanting to die alone. But he says, they will do everything together. Including DIE together. And that is the least healthy parting shot in an argument I have ever heard, but Sam is in such a dark place, that this is genuinely where the argument takes him, that this is his depressing parting shot meant to reassure Dean, who looks miserable, while Sam storms off, unable to see how horrifying that sounded, deep deep deep in the dark place that comes from where their relationship pushes them.

Obviously the writing of this is meant to convey that it’s awful, because it’s having Dean’s POV be bad - that they can’t work together because he’s traumatised about Sam dying - but then Sam’s response would be almost sensible - not great, but sensible - if he didn’t declare that they would die together. That they should rather latch onto each other to die together, than make sensible beneficial decisions where one might have to let go of the other for a greater good. Maybe even to the jeapordy of the very mission they’re on.

They need to be able to let go.

-

Anyway I guess I am getting another mug of tea and going to see what Berens has in store for me…

*laughs nervously*


	21. 13x21

Not. Enough. Hugs.

Expectations: Bobo is gonna write his last episode which will make every other writer heading to the door trying to churn out some swan song fare thee well nonsense taste like ash.

I will probably cry because this mofo makes me cry all the time and I hate it because I never cry at Supernatural and the last couple of years Bobo has me leaking everywhere

-

Recap!

Lucifer saying they’ll find Jack and remake the world in his image. Gross. No thanks.

Sam and Rowena bonding over seeing Lucifer’s true face and it being awful

Gabriel complaining they took all his grace

Michael, Mary and Jack’s adventures

Gabriel and Rowena being the most powerful allies. What a world. Like 10 episodes ago it wasn’t even like this at all :P

A last glimpse of Sam’s stupid parting shot about them dying together. Whee. Sarcasm font.

-

Um.

Okay so this is either a dream or the future (yes.) or my next fic, and I’m only 1 second in, but all I know is that Jack, dressed all in white because he’s Jesus, is watching Dean eat his 7th bit of pizza with pure horror, while Cas lovingly, smilingly, chides him for it.

Oh yeah there’s Mary, laughing in the background. And she’s wearing a different but still white and blue (Mother Mary) plaid.

This dialogue is literally bunker fluff banter about Jack counting Dean eating his pizza slices and Dean calling him a narc for saying so.

“John and me, we used to call him our little piglet” I am so happy. Pre-tragedy Winchester family fluff. My heart.

Sam offering to help Mary do the dishes

Dean getting Cas to punt him another pizza once Mom is no longer watching. Dear lord. The silent “gimme pizza” moment of our dreams.

Sam checking in on Mary!! How are you since… Being over there

Sam’s wearing the same shirt from the end of 12x22

“I always knew you and Dean would come and save us. And you did.”

-

Yep that was Sam’s dream, which of all the available options was the absolute worst because he’s the one who wasn’t talking at the table, but has been missing a family the most, missing out on Mary, missing out on having Cas and Jack around, having Dean being normal. Wanting the relationship with Mary, and all the fun nuggets like “my little piglet” which makes her tease Dean and make Sam laugh… Oh god my heart. I’m a minute in and I can’t take it.

-

And Mary starting to act like an alarm clock, Sam Sam Sam Sam, to wake him up. Oh no. Oh noooo it’s awful. The alarm clock corrupted her in the dream: his image of her is so dependant on what’s around him, so easy for her to be snatched away, when he thinks he’s having a good moment with her at long freaking last

-

Last season I staked my entire house on the Sam and Mary dynamic being key and it felt like very few others cared, certainly not in the wider fandom, and along with that there was a whole lot of not understanding either of them. I’m so glad that Sam and Mary’s dynamic has been more centrally placed this season and signposted because I’m so fed up that I spent all that energy on it last season and ended up feeling like I was shouting into a void :P

-

“He needed to extract his grace *finger quotes* in private” *Sam looks up like uuuuuh* “So I left him alone in Dean’s room” *Dean looks up like EXCUSE ME DEAR DID YOU JUST SAY -

“What? No!”

Sam smirks, Dean looks pleadingly at Cas.

I was just joking in 13x20 about how Dean n Gabriel have a weird vibe about them, but I think at this point Dean is just thinking you left the skankiest archangel alone in my room???

I don’t think there’s a subtextual whatnow between them about this, he just doesn’t want to know what angel grace looks like under a blacklight

-

Awww Rowena is wearing orange… With a turtleneck…..

#Samwitch forever  
#Jinkies!

-

making jokes about Gabriel’s essence last episode and now the left him alone in the room to do it, and showing off Zerbe’s merch and they’re all just peering at that lil dot of glowiness… Gabriel is getting a lot of impotency jokes here.

-

“That is the jet fuel of divine emissions!”

*Dean pulls another face re: emissions*

-

Jesus CHRIST the rift is literally SAGGING FLACCIDLY

Bobo I hate you

-

of the 5 of them, Rowena’s face remains, as ever, a total gem.

-

holy shit and then Gabriel lowers his blade as well

who DIRECTED THIS SHIT?

-

They all sigh and Gabriel lets his blade flop entirely to his side

-

Rowena looks completely unimpressed.

-

“Well that was fast”   
“One could say premature.”  
“I thought it would be enough!”

Jesus christ what is happening in the latter part of the episode that we’re getting this scene now?

-

Oh my god that was just the COLD OPEN

-

As always though, Cas being the one who has to say the really horrible thing, like, they will all just wait for him to proclaim the bad news. Maybe he just likes people to say things out loud even when they’re obvious *clears throat* but also he always has that streak where he will suggest the awful plan and be first to realise some horrible path that they must take.

-

TFW retires to the kitchen to talk. Sam sits on the steps, now the exile, while Cas leans on the family dinner table. It’s the place he goes in his head which has the best service. The connection to his family. Dean leans as well, Cas and Dean mirroring each other, providing more of a united front, as the two of them have the emotional headspace to root for this plan, however Sam feels, while Sam is caught by his trauma, isolated, hunched up and small on the floor, less of their party.

-

Every time it ends the same way - with the Devil on the loose again.

Hey at least this time he’s already on the loose so even the worst case is that nothing changes :P

-

Well no the worst case is that he somehow possesses Rowena and takes the most powerful witch ever for a joyride.

Actually no he’s locked in his vessel

-

the worst case scenario is they kill him before they get the grace, so they have to wait for Gabriel to charge up and *oh no* Lucifer is dead

-

God, Cas saying “the worst possible violation” re: being possessed by Lucifer is so ridiculously validating. He understands what Sam went through and he’s showing he understands, feels the same way. The two of them have this connection of knowing what it’s like, and Sam hears from Rowena that she knows what it’s like to be tortured by him, hears from Cas what it’s like to be possessed by him… His support group is here

-

I still love the camera angle of Cas standing in front of Dean and Dean behind him and the camera is flattening them together.

After the directing on the soggy rift, and Mittens telling me Phil is responsible I’m just like… no surprises here mate.

-

Plus. Cas had a shoulder!Dean there

-

Gabriel yoinks a book out of the shelf. It’s Laying Pipe. A beginner’s guide to plumbing and pipe fitting.

The cover is suitably phallic.

Gabriel is standing by the katana - the pointy one that the BMoL kept sharp. Ya know, sword sharpening.

Something he was having issues with just now despite all his sharp wooden swords last week.

-

Penis.

-

“It’s not always like that!!”“Gabriel, please.”

She was waiting for him to break that tension.

*manly virile page turning*

*more angry defences*/“I don’t need to hear excuses!”

… Rowena being left alone in the library to tease their other guests is the best part of the show and they should start a regular segment which is talkshow style of Rowena plus whatever poor sucker of the week is hanging out in the bunker

“It doesn’t make me any less of an archangel!”  
“mright.”

-

Oh now you’re blaming Rowena for your perfomance, huh, buddy?

-

Rowena saying a drunk six year old could operate the spell is probably not commentary on the fact that Dean is the last person to do it, huh?

-

Rowena saying “the three amigos with their bro hugs, pep talks and melodrama” changes the fundamental dynamic - the stereotype of their nonsense is the three of them hugging it out, instead of in 10x05, the last time they were meta textually mocked for it, Sam n Dean getting the BM scenes, and Cas and Dean’s in-show dynamic not being explictly referenced except for the fact that Dean clearly thought the personal space jokes were being taken too far before he had the explanation. This makes it clear the BM moments are about TFW, uses the fact that the 3 of them are all together right now to put them all in one room and have them talking out the latest issue together away from the others, in order to establish that Cas is firmly a part of what was once the bro dynamic.

Of course he’s had moments where he hangs with them in what otherwise would be the BM scene of the episode right the way through, but THIS is a metatextual statement about the dynamic, one that is more than just Rowena’s snark, but writer commentary on another level, pulling on our pre-existing understanding of the show mocking the BM moments to make it expressly clear that Cas is involved too.

If Bobo is on the way out to nurture the Wayward Sisters, then this is one of those closing statements on his way. That he wants us to understad that Cas is intrinsically a part of this dynamic, and that the FUNDAMENTAL CORE of the show, the BM Scene, is a TFW inclusive incident no matter whether all 3 of them are involved in it or not, it is a thing they do TOGETHER and is NOT a justthebros meta joke. The BM thing is not just the concept of Sam and Dean looking weepy at each other over the car. It’s their FAMILY, together, just as Bobo shows Sam dreaming of their FAMILY being TFW, mom and Cas’s weird son who counts how much pizza you eat.

-

Jesus christ I was going to make a joke that Rowena and Gabriel would probably bang as my next point to break the mood of that rant but I hit play and she’s checking out his tush and inner monologuing it.

Never mind.

they gonna bang

-

“She’s so tiny. and angry.”

I stan 1 heterosexual couple.

-

Ahahahaha he noticed her dancer’s body and wondered how flexible she is. Oh dear. I’m gonna back off because I may or may not have written this exact thing in my notes in her last episode

-

They’re adorable.

-

“So, we’ve a little time.”

Oh dean’s room is not going to get out of this unscathed

-

She raises up the wooden pestle.

“to fill what?”

-

*red flashing sign which says ‘PENIS’ is glaring uncontrollably in the corner of the screen*

-

Listen, because these two are the skankiest archangel and rowena, who is, well, rowena, we are getting to enjoy subtext for the sake of immediate pay off that they’re openly attracted to each other and we’re literally getting their checking each other out and staring into each other’s eyes montage.

Sure does help with the show doing this more subtly in other places.

-

SHE’S

i

Phil -

BOBO

-

yeah and abruptly to give them some privacy, back to TFW who are gonna come to whatever conclusion, go looking for Gabriel and Rowena, and end up knocking on Dean’s door, open it, there they are in a heap in his bed.

-

Bobo “invented the fan fiction gap” Berens writing like it’s going out of style

-

Oh no Sam’s sitting next to the coffee maker that was briefly haunted by Kevin, in a Bobo episode.

-

“I don’t like it, but it’s our only choice. Our fun, great choice.”

Bobo I forgot how much I love your Sam. Your Sam makes me laugh and cry. And here is sarcastic Sam, briefly returning from hiatus, and of course you are writing my favourite and the best version of Sam.

He gets to call out how they make these choices all the time where they have to go do horrible things, even against their own trauma. When he’d rather be anywhere else.

-

Dean points out they only have 24 hours as a complaint, but Sam has a “wait a second” which maaay or may not be resolving that. But first, they go find their archangel and witch -

Dean looks a little perturbed

-

Awwww they were only making out among the books, not defiling Dean’s room.

Shame.

-

Cas’s head immediately tilts.

Fan fic aside, this is the most action the Bunker has EVER seen.

Unless Sam and Eileen hooked up in 12x17, that is.

The most confirmed action. No one has ever brought a date back here.

Dean still has not hooked up with Cas. That we know of.

-

“Reading books… here in the library… Which is the room we are in now.” Well okay sure

Sam is utterly horrified. Take your shipping pick on which one or both of them he’s most affronted by.

Gabriel is 100% that guy you can NOT introduce to your attractive friends.

-

What is Cas even doing

he’s like… I can’t even look at you, Gabriel

-

Oh, bartender in the shirt Gabriel will be in very shortly. *pretends not to be surprised*

I guess we’re not hearing the plan yet :P

-

The bartender sounds awfully concerned about how much Lucifer is drinking - if it’s Gabriel, he’s needling him about how much he’s drinking, maybe just to hear how he justifies it.

-

“I had Heaven… Hell… in the palm of my hand. You know what I learned?” Me, internally: “Nothing.”

Lucifer grumbling about how they don’t matter, though. They don’t matter to HIM, but they matter for the world running smoothly. The natural order, the cogs whirring as they should, would all do so much better without you around. Wherever you go, you don’t fit in and you suck.

-  
He moves on to grumbling about Jack and how he can’t find him, how it doesn’t matter because “his bitch of a mother poisoned him against me, probably forever” - humanity is a poison to him. Love and compassion literally toxic.

-

“I’m sure things will work out in the end. Jack will come around!”

I know Gabriel is just trying to troll Lucifer, but it does read as ominous, because all season the low key threat has been there that Jack might end up going at least a little darkside. More darkside than being reckless and accidentally hurting people. Going over a darkside where he doesn’t immediately feel dreadful about the people who get hurt around him.

-

Hahaha he’s so drunk. Rowena can magically roofie him. Wonderful.

And of course at the reveal, Gabriel has Kingdom Beer signs on top of him. The sign of the Kingdom of Heaven.

(I continue kinda wondering/hoping about the prodigal son return for Gabriel)

The thing is, how did they know Lucifer would be here or receptive to being roofied? Honestly, if this episode keeps up the quality, I won’t question it beyond this note :P

-

Oh I love this confrontation.

“Surprise”

He runs out of a bright white door and right through the other side.  This feels a LOT like Chuck’s bar in 11x20, which calls back to Robbie’s fare thee well episode, and reminds us that Gabriel really is the most like his father of all his sons, but also is the trap in the fairy tent with Charlie in 8x11.

There’s a stag on the door, and that’s more virile imagery.

-

If Gabriel is low on grace, I’d imagine this is Rowena’s work, for the most part, and Gabriel just has to be intimidating enough to make this work.

-

Oh look here’s someone else “back from the dead” … It’s not Lucifer’s day

and even if she’s not on the fullest full power, she’s ready to meet Lucifer, because Sam’s the one who kills her.

-

He must think he’s hallucinating some people he killed, until it all get too real.

-

“Put me out of my misery! Go ahead!”

this is what I like to hear.

Sadly, I doubt they will. But it’s still music to my ears.

Lucifer reaching the nadir of this arc, wherever it’s supposed to go… I hope to his death, and it would be nice if he did die at the end of the season and the show was brave enough to move on to a world without Lucifer. With the apparent draw of Mark P to some parts of the audience I’m scared they won’t, but at the very least it’s seeming somewhat plausible right now, as he’s brought down again and again and shown to have no moral fibre, no redeeming qualities, no drive to do better. Through and through, vile and useless, the story tells us, agreeing with how he comes across, how Mark P as Lucifer makes us feel in a way that the energy of Casifer did not convey at all because that all seemed to be at least for a purpose and Casifer was fun, and it didn’t seem to be implying Lucifer trailing on and on and unendingly on as it ended up being >.>

-

take 2 of the spell! Lucifer trussed up in the Bunker library, Dean perching on a table. Get your muddy boots off that chair.

-

I love watching him kneeling there leaking grace. I’m petty like that… I feel like everyone in the room is too. It has a feeling like when they stole Metatron’s grace, but instead no one cares to heal him and they’re not even really aiming to make him human, they’re just kinda. Ew. Lucifer. Who cares.

-

Rowena’s trousers are INCREDIBLE.

-

I swear they used “stuck pig” in the last couple of episodes, or I’m imagining that?

Anyway Sam’s plan is the least they could do to Lucifer

hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

-

This is what happens when you suck: eventually a bunch of guys (gender neutral term) pin you down, leave you frozen in place dripping grace in a gross way, and all laugh at you before they leave

-

“When we get back, then we’ll kill you.”

Nice plan. Sadly, nice as it is, it gives Lucifer wiggle room to not be here or not be dead >.>

Rowena staying behind with him is unconcerning when Sam goes through the rift in the sense of character death (and she’s a lot more confident around Lucifer all of a sudden :P) but I still don’t want anything too bad to happen to her :( Still, it seems like a half-assurance that she will be okay.

-

“Save your mum,” Rowena says.

The main problem, of course, being that Lucifer knows Mary is there, doesn’t know Jack is there, but while they played it very cool, it’s worryingly likely he’s starting to guess that Jack is in there, whether he can sense him through the rift or he just has a feeling that this might be it…

-

Ahahahaha it’s on a hill

Sam and Cas roll down it, Gabriel kinda cartwheels, and Dean comes out running and does a cool skid down the hill.

Oh gross, Gabriel ended up face first in Cas’s crotch :P Dean is like FIRST YOU DEFILE ROWENA AND NOW CAS? HOW DARE -

-

IS THIS ENTIRE EPISODE ABOUT PENISES?

-

Dean is just… wow

-

You guys, sometimes it’s easy to meta an episode and sometimes it is very very hard and sometimes you don’t even wanna type the words very very hard

-

“Kentucky. North East Kentucky” are we here entirely because of Asmodeus or is this to put us kinda halfway between Michael and Jack’s last known location? Not that they know Michael’s current location.

-

Rowena has no time for concern trolling about being “left behind in the kitchen” when she knows the only reason Lucifer would care is because he wants out.

She also reminds him he’s being emasculated, because yes, this episode is all about penises.

-

Lucifer switches to being annoying, singing the same song as the password to Billie’s pad in 11x10 - the episode where he first killed Rowena.

-

Gabriel walking along holding his blade at a 90 dergee angle to his body

-

Cas drops by to casually check how Gabriel is feeling about running Heaven maybe perhaps pretty please?

Gabriel points out all the things which could kill them first before they ever need to worry about that

Oh gosh he did have sex with Rowena. At some point. Maybe not right then in the library unless he magically dressed her again. But some point between then and now. Pfft.

-

Poor Dean’s room I guess.

-

Cas is remarkably good at steering this conversation, when he has a point to get to. He has learned a considerable amount of tact before getting to “Heaven’s dying, Gabriel,” because for one thing he hasn’t hauled him aside and said all this sooner. I’m always pleased when Cas’s people skills are apparent.

-

“They wouldn’t want me back, Castiel. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a screw up. Hell, as far as *I’m* concerned I’m a screw up.”

Oh, no. Please don’t make me like you any more than I already do. This is the opposite conversation to 9x18 in the car with meta!Gabriel, Cas having to bring up the subject of Gabriel leading Heaven. It has to be him because they need an archangel, so there’s no double bluff to pull where Cas could do it instead. There were 9x18 vibes all over last episode right down to Dean having a soft moment over the phone from a motel with Cas while they worked 2 ends of a case, and now we have this. 9x18 is steering a little bit from the background.

I LIKE the idea of Gabriel as the leader of a mostly stable but much more chill Heaven. And this seems tentatively positive, that it’s maaaaybe just a self-esteem/compatibility thing. This is what is immediately being offered as the first obstacle to mind. Gabriel left, because of his brothers, but they’re all dead or bound in the main world. They daren’t haul Michael out of the pit, even just to imprison him in Heaven to keep the lights on, apparently, which just leaves him. And his major reasons for leaving are all gone now. No more archangels. Just him.

Which means that I was right after Naomi asked Cas to see about getting him back, that this comes down to how Gabriel feels, that after all this isolation, it’s about does he feel he can return home, and how will home feel about him returning.

-

“Well, heaven’s been run into the ground by upstanding angels. Perhaps a screw up is what we need.”

ILY babe

-

*Cas looks hopefully at Gabriel*

*Conversation ends with a long shot of their walk in the woods*

-

Well that was a veeeery interesting note to leave that. As I was saying a few hours ago about 13x20, it may be that Gabriel doesn’t need to find something to stand for to die for, but to LIVE for, which is a much more positive thing. I really actually kinda like the way this dovetails with Heaven’s problems as a reason to compel him to go back, because Gabriel approaching it like a screw up who doesn’t want to break anything sure is better than an egomaniac having a go.

-

Sam is feeling bouncier just to be in the same universe as mom and Jack

he wants the pizza party

let him have the fucking pizza party

it was just his birthday!

-

He’s wearing his dumb backpack he’s had season season 1 and it makes me unhappy in a “oh god he was so tiny” way

-

He’s also being unnervingly optimistic about how close they are to winning, to getting Mary and Jack back, and he’s finally got optimism. His mood is basically defined by this to such a horrible degree.

… Which is totally not a parallel to the beginning of the season where Dean was miserable until they got Cas back at which point he was so happy that Sam called him out on it

-

*distant screams of campers being menaced by a wendigo in the woods*

-

“Not our world, not our problem.”

Dude, they’re hunters wherever

-

Interesting how everyone here knows about the supernatural, so random hikers keeping low off the grid will know what was attacking them. And some basic lore about how vampires were affected by the lower population and starvation

-

TBH the comparison to the wendigo in looks isn’t too wildly far off; they’re both humans who have become completely monstrous in a way where they go off the deep end

-

The rebels Jack and Mary set up a colony there  
…  
that could be anyone

-

Oh, great, tunnel of terrifying vampires. This is a distraction/time waste that will probably eat up the rest of the episode for them and cause nothing but pain >.>

-

Oh, we’re only halfway through…

-

Gah how are we only halfway through??

-

Oh no, Rowena. Being left alone with Lucifer being annoying is one thing. Being left alone with him talking about how he murdered her is not a thing where she can play up the vindictiveness of the situation… trauma is trauma and just because she has him bound and knows he can’t kill her isn’t something that makes her entirely immune to facing that :(

-

Oh Rowena

-

Oh no

-

… Although within that Rowena casually calls them “his three fathers” which is hilarious and also particularly awful for Lucifer to  hear because it was bad enough knowing that Jack liked Cas more than him when he didn’t know that

-

Yeeeep she didn’t know that winding him up makes him stronger because anger is where his power comes from because he’s so fuckin awful

-

Also ew he has something to fight for.

At least until Jack smushes him like a bug /wishful thinking

-

Oh for - he didn’t even jump into the portal, she threw him off of her and he went in it by accident.

I mean, just for accountability stakes, adding it all up, could that have been any more her fault? Bleh :P

-

I assume the portal will still stay open a lil while, but

-

Oh, she’s packing the Black Grimoire.

Good.

Now, is she actually going into the rift to save them, while putting on her fancy coat and scarf and all?

Or is she leaving?

-

“Not my problem!”

-

Those guys are your friends.

“BOLLOCKS!”

How DARE I have feelings. FEELINGS.

-

I guess Gabriel is also on the other side of the rift.

They’re soulmates :P

-

Omg it’s not the old mine from 1x02 and 11x19

I’m actually disappointed

-

Heheh everyone has glowsticks

party!Cas

-

THIS PLACE IS SCARY AND I DON’T LIKE IT

-

WHERE IS THE RAVE?

-

Wonder how much speculation we’ll get about Dean looking up at that one bright light and being in a spotlight under it… Like, Michael-wise.

It is interesting to single him out with the spotlight.

-

*Cas and Gabriel just casually moving rocks*

Look, Cas could blast those all away but they’re trying to play it cool for the campers

-

Who may or may not get picked off by vampires

-

No, Sam is wandering

he will be picked off by vampires

-

Bobo you need to stop killing Sam

-

I mean theoretically you just murdered Sam and are ditching the show to go write Wayward like hah hahahaha no consequences here I am the showrunner, now I will make Claire and Kaia kiss

-

Think of how Jody will feel, my guy

-

…

Okay that’s enough of the “Sam is permanently dead lol” joking.

-

“Saaaam!” Cas yells and disappears down the tunnel

-

Cas comes back Sam-less and makes Dean leave too. I’m gonna be ship neutral on account of how Sam just got eaten by vampires. But it was intense and sad.

-

Yet, somehow, less sad than that time Cas died in front of Dean, when it comes to OTT melodrama. I mean there was a lot of shouting, but Dean’s still moving.

-

Dean looks great

-

Hey, I guess 11x17 was good practice for this.

-

Cas ought to be walking with him holding his hand. It’s criminal to make him do this alone

-

Wow, Sam you look terrible.

-

Guys, are you really going to destroy the angel warding on the camp? That’s SUPER DANGEROUS

-

MARY

HUGS

YAY

(Why are you not hugging Cas?)

-

So yeah, you gotta tell mom that Sam’s dead now

-

Just to get you

-

You can have one (1) family member at a time

-

Aw no don’t cry!!!

-

Look, your brother was just taking a snooze because the rave got too real! He and his glowstick are fine!

…

Somehow

-

Is he a vampire?

-

Mittens tells me he’s not a vampire, which just makes this all the more confusing

-

Aw

shit

-

Sam’s like, can we go back to when I was dead?

-

Okay now he’s heard Lucifer’s story he’s like can I REALLY go back to being dead?

-

This is like when someone wakes you up in the morning and you just don’t wanna get out of bed. In that moment, no matter how much you love that person, they are to you metaphorically what Lucifer is to Sam right now.

Fitting, that it started with him vs his alarm clock as a loved one

Now we see the even darker side to mornings

-

Look, I’m kinda… horrified here so I’m just…

Can you kill this fucker and get back to your family already?

-

HONESTLY if I was Sam I’d take my chance with the wall of angry vampires rather than stick around for this conversation

-

“You need me”

… no shade on that concept though or anything, when it’s a wall of angry vampires vs pretending to like Lucifer so he can hang out with Jack

-

I mean seriously I love Sam to bits but I’d be genuinely happy to see him torn apart by vampires again just to spite Lucifer.

-

Oh JACK no sweetie

We didn’t even see them getting to hug each other, it’s just straight to Gabriel sitting quietly, Jack pacing miserably, demanding why they didn’t bring Sam back

-

Oh, he’s fine

all that stress for nothing

-

“Please don’t judge this friend I made at the rave, it was a really really bad night.”

-

Do you ever find yourself staring into space thinking, “I would genuinely have been happier if the last shot of the episode was Sam being torn apart by vampires for the second time in 15 minutes?”

-

This is gonna go over swimmingly in a Buckleming episode for all the character dynamics. They are the only writers left who seem to actually like Lucifer.

-

Why does everything build up to stuff that needs to be handled by not-Buckleming right before a Buckleming episode anyway?


	22. 13x22

I already miss Bobo

(sometimes I can still hear his voice)

It’s 7:15 and I have yoga in a bit and the sun is shining directly on my screen where my cheap ass curtains don’t meet but I am gonna start watching because what is flow and continuity in tone to these writers anyways. This is a “may as well rip the plaster off” sort of start.

Regular readers of my notes will know exactly how thrilled I was to have BL handling the big character driven everyone in the same room clusterfuck this episode promises to be and lil update: since then the promos have reassured me that nope they don’t have tone or nuance and we’re in for some quality characterisation.

This is a damage control set of notes, I assume.

-

Blah blah plot recap. They cut the conversation from 13x20 to just Sam n Dean talking about going into the apocalypse world, then “we’ll die together” which I can’t work out in this context (I’m hoping against hope the recap isn’t dictated by BL and TJW is cobbling it together) is irony that Sam then went and died, alone, or a yet-to-come omen of the end of the season. At least BL are handing us over to Dabb for the end of season nonsense so I have to rely on him having a wacky emu war of 1932 hits the present day through Shenanigans sort of season 14 premise to build up and fling at us to make us forget all this.

-

I love Sam’s “we’re gonna drain you” speech layered over everyone dramatically walking into apocalypse world.

-

Christ for half a sec I thought they were gonna recap Gabriel in Cas’s crotch

-

Did Lucifer only start calling Rowena “Red” when he was Vince or is that something I missed from season 11? Because hearing boring ass Lucifer say it just makes me miss when he was Vince.

-

this is such a full recap of 13x21 I’m basically just writing fresh episode notes for it

-

I don’t think I saw anyone talk about how cool it was when Dean shot a vampire and exploded its head off. Like, understandably Sam was dead and it was a high-pressure situation but

-

ALSO Cas says “he’s gone” and he sure as hell didn’t mean “I can’t find him” he meant “Sam’s dead” but that euphemism landed Cas so much fandom flak for not looking for Sam I am starting to feel like he should have just said “I saw eight vampires chowing down on every part of him they could reach” and traded Dean’s feelings for clarity.

…

I love that Cas has evolved as a character to the point he uses a gentle euphemism to spare Dean’s feelings because there was once a harsher version of Cas that would have said that.

-

Are they going to recap the whole Lucifer conversation

-

I mean it means we can’t judge Sam at all for what he did

-

HUGS

-

Mary’s like holy shit he’s really here, all shaky hands and scared to touch him. Good. She was criticised so much from the promo for not caring, I’m gonna gif that in extreme slow mo close up if I get even one (1) pissy anon about her

-

Dean hangs back, knowing that Sam walking in with Lucifer can NOT be good news, and asking “what happened” is basically already knowing what happened

Oh good we already have “I didn’t watch the last episode despite the 40 minute recap” syndrome.

Just quickly to get us up to that point - Lucifer is playing all benevolent when Sam says “he brought me back” with the due horror of the situation. Cas, with Jack at his side, also glaring father-like-son, says “that’s not what you do” in defiance of what Lucifer has done - good to call him out for his personality traits not matching his actions, e.g. there’s always a catch and we know it, but to Jack if there is to be conflict, is in the face of Lucifer’s actions and we’re manufacturing that TFW judge Lucifer harsher than he deserves. Even when we know Lucifer said that he’d take Jack by force and Sam is pretty much protecting Jack to take this bargain.

Anyway. Cas asks “how did you get in here” perhaps in the assumption a: they’re in a walled compound rather than open woodland with perimeter guards and b: that Gabriel didn’t melt all the warding last episode meaning it’s not even open woodland with perimeter guards and anti-angel warding, it’s just a big ass open space that they strolled into. The implication in Cas’s words is that it should have been much harder for Lucifer to show up, that this place is better defended, to the point of bafflement about that. It’s a smaller thing, but it’s irksome because I know BL don’t read the other episodes because they’ve literally said it in interviews, which makes stray details stand out like a sore thumb, especially when characters sound stupider than they should - rephrasing this “why are you here” or “what’s going on” would be a neutral way of asking without mis-characterising the situation or having it come across just… slightly odd. Just seems to be an implication that Lucifer didn’t just stroll between the trees and through an open gate as his arrival and more specifically, that there were wards or barriers that could have done anything to stop him, and Cas is talking like it’s inconcievable he got past them all - what all? :P

-

Lucifer says “VIP pass - I’m with the band!” which is extra hilarious that I was missing Vincifer a minute ago, because it’s downgraded him from that rock god status he wanted, and now he’s acting like the whiny groupie and Sam is the rockstar, TFW and family the band, and Lucifer is desperate to get in with them. Of course the Vincifer arc revealed that Lucifer never was a rock god, a year before he fails at actually being God for the exact same personality flaws, but at this point the acknowledgement is pretty much just for kicks and giggles because seeing him mocked amuses me. Seeing him have to admit there’s a higher order he wants in with and TFW etc are more important than him and this is like, backhanded grovelling… yeah.

-

As soon as Lucifer redirects his attention to Jack, Dean comes storming in. Of course Sam is excluding himself from this conversation in raw shame and I can’t even look at his face because it is the Worst™ but now we have Cas, Dean and Uncle Gabe defending Jack (BL politely not writing any Gabriel dialogue yet and every minute they don’t is a minute I don’t have a migraine so thanks guys, appreciate it.) and Dean sounds extremely protectively fatherly and Cas is also then weighing in with parental authority… Yeah, last episode Rowena said all 3 of them were Jack’s fathers and it’s a different dynamic from Claire but I like seeing Cas and Dean as a parent team and I won’t apologise for that :P

But, again, Jack is only 7-8 months old with a still tuning moral compass, a teenager disposition, and Cas and Dean are making parental decrees about who he can talk to, and catching him in the middle of a fight over the right to have access to him without asking his opinion. It could possibly be more frustration over that than genuine desire to meet Lucifer that upsets Jack.

Because he’s still like *SCOWL* at Lucifer, still being framed with Cas. Cas says he’s “kelly kline’s son” and I love that Cas continually reminds Lucifer that Jack had a mother too, and that for all her terrible writing in season 12 at the very least we established “human” and “generically nice and loving towards her baby” as traits to call on :P I like that Cas is determined to emphasise where Jack gets his personality from, and that Cas doesn’t define Jack by his powers. But that is ignoring that Jack HAS powers and that does factor into his life in a… rather major way… especially as the way he’s been flung around so far he’s had so little time to develop a personality outside of having powers, except for Sam encouraging him to watch movies and TV to foster a shared taste before Dean could think to twist Jack to his cruel purpose and have another vote on movie night in his favour, so now it’s Sam n Jack vs Dean n Cas and -

Anyway. I’m procrastinating.

Lucifer emphasising that he has powers, even if he gets carried away describing how ruthlessly he uses them, is a way of connecting with Jack that no one else dared, when in 13x06 all of TFW are just like, shit, when I had magic powers I unleashed Lucifer/went on a megalomaniac God rampage/hooked up with Crowley, and immediately all get too ashamed of themselves to sit Jack down and have The Talk so he freaked out and left and tl;dr that’s how we’re here.

Just, like, shit, show him all 3 Spiderman films where Uncle Ben tells Peter “with great power comes great responsibility”, and you’re set, guys. Sheesh.

-

“No. Kill him.”

*Gabriel side-eye reaction shot with no dialogue but a fascinated amusehorror about what’s going on*

I’m starting to get the feeling BL just plain forgot Gabriel was in this episode, but the rest of the peeps involved were like, uh, he’s in this episode because where else would he be, so Speight just came to set like he was supposed to, and hung out in all the scenes as appropriate.

I will now watch and interpret this episode based on that fact.

-

Sorry, Jack’s going through a lot of conflict because Dean just point blank ordered him to melt his biological father on the spot, and I’m bitching about how someone forgot to add any pointers for Gabriel’s existence into the script, not even in a character stan way, just in a sheer disbelief way, because of my horror of this being an episode with double digit named important characters in it and all in one location and being handled by the writers who can’t even deal with Sam and Dean having distinct personalities in a scene with 3 characters half the time.

-

Okay, Gabriel ad libbed a “Dean” in there. I’m assuming after like 3 minutes of contact he’s quite chuffed to have a nephew and knows Dean can be too harsh so he was being protective.

-

But yeah, of course it was Dean getting too angry about Lucifer (rightfully too angry, but still, emotionally mis-handling it) and making Jack disappear that sets this off, because Lucifer can just be a hub of chaos based on his reputation and act chill in the knowledge it will infuriate everyone around him into acting irrationally. Dean’s been especially anxious and angry this recent year - and is building up to something awful perhaps if he is possessed by the end of the season - so it makes sense with his history of acting irrationally and being harsh on Jack from the start of the season that at the end he causes this.

Look, I’m complimenting character choices as much as being baffled by them, but what is clear is I need to be this in depth to have a chance in hell of grappling this episode >.>

-

Long shot where everyone just stands there in mute horror and Cas is the only one who looks around like he might see Jack hiding in a tree.

Remember back in 9x11 where I was like… did they just confirm he can see through walls… and literally no one ever replied to me about this hypothesis because it was too batshit? Well I am gonna have to assume that Cas looking around like that would only make sense if he can X-ray vision Jack hiding nearby >.>

-

Dean’s like “He does that when he’s scared. Way to go, dad!” despite the fact he was the one responsible for scaring Jack - I mean, Jack is probably FREAKED OUT about Lucifer showing up in general, but Dean’s reaction is upsetting as well, especially when he’s already emotionally in a bad place and now Dean is asking too much of him.

This episode is where all the stuff about fatherhood lands, and Jack is playing Dean and possibly Sam, while Sam, Dean, Cas and Lucifer are probably all playing shades of John Winchester.

It’s a shame Lucifer changed his clothes because the Nick vessel was wearing up to a point always the same clothes that John had been wearing last time we saw JDM on screen, and that was a subtextual “brrr” about Lucifer in season 5 - that he was mirroring John in some ways.

We got enough parents here that they could literally all play, like, a seven deadly sin or something of John’s.

Dean, of course, playing explosive anger. Sam seeming at the moment to play the part that shut down in horror and wasn’t there for his boys and made all the bad choices for good reasons that exposed them to the bad stuff. Lucifer playing the abusive side that manipulates, uses as bait, and was in general dangerous - the John that Dean thinks of in 5x16 when not saying what he did when Sam ran away. Cas is playing the side that truly loved his boys, but saw their mother in them and there has been plenty of analysis of how this messed up the dynamic in any way from John withdrawing from Dean for reminding him too much to the parentification thing.

-

Gabriel is like, I’m not meant to be in this episode, so I’ll just… go look for Jack… to explain why I was not in the following conversation…….

-

Lucifer drops the parent thing as soon as Jack is gone and switches to saying they “need” him to use against Michael, while bragging he “beat” him (good to know his ego and lying remains intact - the same boasting that got him in trouble with Heaven when he said he could make new angels and give them their wings back).

Cas immediately does the most #married thing I’ve ever seen him do to Dean - the “we’re on a hike together and I want the trail mix in your bag honey so i’m just gonna open it up and get it out while we stand here” thing.

But with handcuffs.

Look, Dean n Cas are special and perfect in a way no one else can get on their level and sometimes it’s because this is their dynamic.

-

Anyway Cas is being a BAMF to Lucifer and that is a good and important part of his characterisation this season.

Not Taking Shit!Castiel

or

as I call him

Party!Cas

-

I can literally see a manifestation of Jared that has left his body in distress, wrapped around Sam in a hug, as he’s forced to casually ask Lucifer a question on screen that he didn’t ask at any point on their hike down here but now the scene is about everyone else who was standing around watching (except Gabriel, who was never in this scene) so Sam gets to butt in with a question that literally anyone else would have been better suited to ask for both character and mechanical reasons.

-

Oh that “31 hours” thing was a total lie because of course Lucifer did no such thing. He knows the rift will probably close in either 24 from when it was opened or 24 from when he was punted through it, but that telling them a number that seems to add up that it’s from then but plus an extra dose of grace, means they will let it close and they’ll all be stuck here, and that’s a tomorrow!Lucifer problem and in the mean time he can utterly fuck them over by thinking that they have a comfortable window to operate in. The countdown is meaningless, however. It all depends on if Rowena can strengthen and stabilise the portal on her end, and nothing else.

-

I love how the contracts are set up in such a way we got all the main stars, “And” Misha, and then we get all the guest stars, “And” Felicia Day. Also this episode is an over-stuffed mess.

-

RO RO

I didn’t think she’d be in this episode, but we see her hard at work with… bagpipe music playing in her head/the Bunker’s sound system? *shrugs, moves on* - anyway, either dramatic irony or Buckleming literally are working on the 31 hours thing depending on how much they read about other episodes. I hope dramatic irony. This is a dialogue-less insert so it’s very possible TJW stuck it in to help.

-

“Are you good?”  
“I’m alive, yeah.”

guys, you fuckers know “alive” ain’t the same as “good” but in this case Sam’s consequences for being alive are the chaos playing out with Lucifer and Jack so that’s like… whatever, we can deal with it, so yeah he IS good, and no he doesn’t have anything to apologise for, and in a way this is all fairly straightforward so yay!

Now hug

Oh shit, that never normally works

HUGS

\o/

-

“What are we gonna do about Lucifer?”  
“I’ll handle it. I will, Dean. Let me handle it.”

THE POWER OF HUGS. YOU RIDE THAT DOPAMINE RELEASE, YOU BRAVE BEAUTIFUL MOOSE

-

I feel like I spoke this episode into being by complaining “not enough hugs” as my tagline for last episode.

-

Anyway Sam is doing WELL because sure he is a guilt ridden bloodstained mess but he has inner strength and outer beauty so he can do this.

-

And Dean says “okay”

Which holy hell is a character growth of utter, sincere trust in Sam. Not that he wouldn’t trust him because, you know, in some ways every moment of character growth is “we already covered this in the opening scene of 5x22 where we sat on the car and had a huge BM” because Kripke spitefully wrapped up the entire story pretty much to piss off every future showrunner when it came to deciding how to write Sam and Dean going forwards. But in the sense that Dean is trusting Sam not to turn this into a ridiculous tragedy again, perhaps. Since that BM was about Dean allowing Sam to die for the cause - as I’ve been following with Gabriel, I think there’s a probable theme of learning to LIVE for the cause now, through a character whose main trait is to die to solve the cause and then run away and not deal with consequences, over and over. And Sam would embody it well to confront Lucifer with a desire to live and not to self-sacrifice, but to fix this so that their family can go home and have a belated pizza birthday party for Sam. FOR SAM.

You aspire to that pizza party, you magnificent moose. Get selfish. YOU DESERVE PIZZA. YOU’RE ALL INVITED

(Except Gabriel)

-

Nougat!

“Hi Jack, I’m your mom!” At the end of the season we’re getting back to all the stuff that has been shoved down since the start. Jack has accumulated more parental figures than he knows what to do with and now he has to sort out how he feels about them, and how much each influences him.

Cas, his father who was supposed to be his guiding figure, the person he was searching for from the moment he stumbled naked and Bambi-like into our world (oh shit he’s Bambi, shit. Stay away from Bobby!!) insists that he is most like Kelly, who only Cas can vouch for as a fellow person with a, like, personality, because hell knows if we or any of the other characters spent any time with her :P Cas is supposedly Jack’s trustworthy rock, and his insistence that Jack is most influenced by Kelly rings true to the sympathetic audience who sees Jack as a nougat-centred boy. Named by his mother, of course.

“No one would blame you if one day you went looking for your dad” have they been holding this back since 13x23? I feel like this was all recorded then and they set up Jack’s arc based around it. Because now he is flashing back to memories of Lucifer bound circa 12x13 or 12x15 when he was calling out to Jack in the womb (while dressed in those John Winchester duds). And in 13x09 they used this in a recap before the episode, and I was like this ain’t the last we heard of it, and sure enough all the pressures that have been on Jack since before he was born are finally being addressed one way or another. Having held back the lines from Kelly - his Cas-approved moral beacon - telling him that there’s nothing wrong with at least looking for your bio father no matter how much of a prick he may turn out to be - means that this is a pressure that’s been on him since 13x03 and despite the fears in 13x09 that he was looking for Lucifer with this in the recap to remind us that Lucifer had been exerting his will on Jack since the womb… Now that Lucifer has found Jack, it’s KELLY telling him that it’s okay to at least be curious about him in a way that presumably resonates a lot with adopted kids who may have always known they had a terrible bio father but still felt curious/that pressure internally or externally to investigate their roots if only to find out who they themselves are…

I feel like this is an all the cards on the table moment, in any case - something Dabb set up about Jack which has been the secret behind the season, something only Jack knew up to this point, even from us the viewer, and we have been the most active participants in the story this season.

“Jack, don’t let anyone tell you who you’re supposed to be. You are who you choose to be.”

Kelly has all the best words.

But yeah, this may not work well in the context that Lucifer has come seemingly in peace, Sam is hanging his head in shame, knowing the terms of Lucifer’s non-violence are that Sam doesn’t reveal that Lucifer was gonna storm in and steal Jack, and only making it easy for Lucifer to have access maintains his peace - that same peace in turn which sows the conflict simply by Lucifer existing there.

It plays into Lucifer’s game that everyone who he has abused and or killed is there acting with justified rage at his presence, and telling Jack how to react to it based on their past experience. But Nougat is 7 months old and can not make these calls. Which means Kelly’s words are now ones of conflict instead of the comfort that he’s been choosing to be good and heroic like the real and fictional characters he wished to emulate.

-

Now we move on to Sam, the first living voice of comfort. “Maybe I’m not worth all this.” “Your mom thought you were,” Sam says, using her as a bridge from the parental authority (and he’s also the one who brought her words to Jack). “So did Cas, so do I.” It’s building these steps of people Jack knows love him, the moral authorities he looks to, to Sam next. Sam’s death worked so well last episode not just because of what it did to Dean, or even how the Lucifer thing was so wonderfully tuned both in Sam’s personal arc to be in that room with him and the vampires, but also that Sam is the most hurt by and connected to Lucifer but he’s the one walking him into the camp. But also that Sam was the one who reached out to Jack first of the living parents he encountered in life, and therefore caring for Sam and being upset by his death was such a horrible thing for Jack to experience, where we see his anger with Dean, Cas and Gabriel for not bringing Sam to him alive.

We get the montage where Jack’s powers were in their early stage, harming people at random, and Sam empathised because of all he’d been through with his own powers. A connection that was so hugely imporant to both of them, that Sam could even start to guide Jack through who he was and how he was related to his powers, and feeling that he didn’t belong.

Now we get Jack’s mess up where they rushed in to Michael’s place, and Kevin self-destructed everyone but him and Mary, and his connection to her - the grandmother sacred object to save and protect because she is Loved and Good and this is how all the men he knows relate to her. (I have talked about how Jack’s represented accidentally ingrained toxic masculinity before >.>)

-

And the scene changes at this point, leaving us with Jack’s reflection on not just his powers, but his own personality, and who he is supposed to be, whether it’s his choice, his genetics, or just who he is in some intangible cursed way where he hurts people and all around him his choices lead to pain. And how much could Sam’s guidance and trust help when even up to last week he was still getting people killed… Bleh.

-

Since it keeps on working… Someone hug that nougat child by the end of this ep?

-

Promo scene, now with context!

“Hey momma,” Lucifer says, also defining Mary only by her relationship to her sons, and his own creepy interest in her.

She punches him because she is more than just momma

Cas continues to be a BAMF Party!Cas in the background but very in the background, hauling Lucifer away with a sharp word.

-

(Incidentally that means everyone from the opening was in this scene, except Gabriel, who they forgot to write into this episode.)

-

So this is post-shower Sam, and I’m gonna assume that he’s either dressed in Bobby’s clothes or dressed alike to Bobby, and either way it continues the Lazarus Rising parallels to Lucifer’s creepy resurrection of Sam after he was dragged away underground after being torn apart in front of his brother - when Dean got back he wore Bobby’s clothes for the first part of the episode. Finding Sam new clothes from AU!Bobby’s wardrobe both puts him into this military camo jacket which almost certainly has some symbolic relevance at some point but at the very least is important for now that Sam’s resolved to deal with Lucifer, and also just has the connection to Bobby.

-

Anyway now Mary has to break the news that she’s planning to stay, after spending months defending and fighting for these people and very much getting embedded in the fight.

Dean looks on blankly, Sam shifts like he’s realised what she’s going to say as soon as she says “about that…”

-

And now we have that “need” thing again. Lucifer just said these people needed him to fight. Mary now says they need her too, for the same reason. One of them is probably a LIL MORE SINCERE than the other.

but Dean turns that into “we need you, mom. *WE* do.” because she’s the thing he needed the most, and this entire process is playing out now about how that even affects them.

And that “we” is sincere because the thing is, Dean might have learned a few times over that is sucks not to have Mary but as horrible as it is, he CAN cope without her but still hasn’t been given a chance to fully actualise that in a healthy environment where Mary is not wildly endangered and dangled out of his reach for true character development (in much the same way his shit with Cas has been hovering on the edge since, like, season 8), but Sam - Sam needs her. Every time they lost a chance to find her, he slumped into utter despair. He only kept going as long as he did at the start of the season on the belief she could be retrieved and was alive, and his depression has been a strongly flagged thing since the midseason where he struggled with it bad enough he was having depression sleeps in 13x11, and 13x14 showed how bad it was, and his despair and desperation have been oozing off him.

Dean knows how much they need to bring Mary and Jack back, for SAM.

(Which is why I think there’s something horribly disingenous about thinking Mary can just be written off to stay in the AU… Which is fine if you don’t like Mary and don’t think to look at it through the POV of how her being alive-ness has been wrecking Sam for TWO SEASONS now and taking her away again to teach Dean a lesson he’s been through three times already (one of them being the entire run of the show 1-11) about how to lose his mother, just hurts Sam an incredible amount. He deserves that fucking pizza party, and he wants his mother to be more than a mirage that an alarm clock can shatter. And sure the story may not grant this wish instantly, but it’s dreadful to want her gone for good because that will harm Sam on a MOLECULAR LEVEL to have an alive and well Mary teased in front of him but never to have her. We need to hold on to her returning in some solid way so that she can throw him a damn birthday party)

-

Ew, Lucifer calls Cas “old sport” fuck off with that, Gatsby.

“I am not your sport” he may misinterpret the reference (come the fuck on, Metatron must have read that book) but he does it in a way that at least gets in a sharp statement of party!Cas’s new line of taking no shit.

But before he can decree for certain that he will not let Lucifer near Jack, refusing to accept Sam’s deal without even really knowing that this WAS the deal, Jack shows up because he’s at the very least taking some agency in all this.

And at this point, my nervous eyeballing of the clock suggests it is time I go to yoga. D:

-

I hope Gabriel shows up at some point again. The fact that he was gone looking for Jack but Jack has now been “found” by turning up voluntarily means that Gabriel vanished completely pointlessly unless they were just moving him out of the way because he’s not in this episode :P

-

“Speak of the not-Devil” - in 13x09 they played on this with a “speak of the devil” preceding Jack’s entrance. As usual, Buckleming taking a clever line someone else used, and turning it around in a way that’s just a bit too silly and contrived >.>

-

“Son.”  
“it’s Jack.”

Good. Please keep Lucifer at that arms’ length. Regret will only come if you let him in >.>

-

“It’s not a good idea to talk to him.”  
“i’m not going to talk, I’m going to listen”

Sweetie, that’s even worse. I know you’re curious but oh boy Lucifer is evil, unredeemable and a master manipulator. I know what Jack means - he’s not opening a dialogue, he just wants to hear what Lucifer would say to him, and not talking indicates hearing him out without weighing his words with any critical weight, but on the other hand, it can come across that he’s going to sit and let Lucifer fill his head with whatever, without arguing or reasoning what he says, and it depends on how much you think Jack can resist being taken in by it

And in this scenario Lucifer’s smugness and everyone else’s horror of the situation already has a strong weight. We can HOPE that Jack prevails but I’m nervous that Lucifer might exert some magical influence over him as much as I feel like a season worth of Jack nearly is enough to make me feel like we are supposed to trust his instinct to be good, unaltered. If there is to be tension about it, that has to be affected.

-

Oh dear, now Dean’s ranting to Mary about what he and Sam have been through, saying “we” about every statement, including “we’ve been possessed” but isn’t it true that almost nothing has ever possessed Dean except a few small MotW moments of control? We statements possibly creating a dramatic irony gap to fill with Dean being possessed, if he is.

He says they never walk away ever, even when they should have, which is acknowledging at least that there were times when with hindsight they should have left each other well enough alone. Thing is he’s talking about how he and Sam clung to each other when it was just them, but for Mary it’s not about walking away from family here, it’s about walking away from this war where people are being killed and she has been helping them to save people and to fight back against the angels. To her, leaving now just because there’s a door back to her old universe - which she has felt adrift in ever since she was resurrected - is walking away. And this is a cause she can believe in far more than the bad cause she got in with the BMoL. There’s a very very clear right and wrong here.

Dean is trying to argue that this isn’t a fight that they can win, that Apocalypse World is doomed, and they’re just going to have to leave it to its fate.

-

Sam is inclined to listen to Mary more often anyways, went with her on the BMoL thing, and this time reads it as her making up her mind, rather than her being right - he is telling Dean the argument is not worth it, rather than immediately that he understands where Mary is coming from. More than he has seen how Mary feels. I hope he says they should stay and help.

“Mom doesn’t to leave these people.”

…

“So let’s take them with us.”

-

I mean. I guess it works???

You just going to empty all the survivors of this war into another universe???

This feels… unsustainable.

-

Oh okay he wants to get them out the way long enough to work out how to fight Michael, then to come back and fight the fight. More like, the portal is the time pressure here, and on the other side of it is safety and resources and time to think.

Except for everyone who they can’t take with them in the first place.

This episode is titled “Exodus” so I mean it COULD end up being about this exact thing, or that’s referring to some other thing and this is just a concept they’re floating but not what ends up happening. If they set off with the entire camp, they’re going to be very vulnerable.

-

Anyway seems Mary likes the plan?

And she looks proud of Sam so that’s something.

-

Dean says they’ve got 9 busting out. Uh, were they planning on taking AU Charlie and Bobby back with them? I am genuinely confused because the core team is 6, and they should PROBABLY not litter the AU and take Lucifer back with them so 7… Maybe Ketch if they take back everyone from their world who shouldn’t be there? But who is 9??

-

Mary says 25 people which is not like… a whole army at least. I’m legit confused about the numbers, especially as it seems like more than 25 people at the camp, never mind that Mary was talking in 13x20 about how many people they had to look after now. I don’t know, maybe it’s just how many extras they could convince to come/plausibly film. But it’s weird to me that this whole thing is… well, a thing.

-

Okay so Jack is all resolutely glaring at Lucifer, and Cas is allowed to hang out and stand there watching, so I guess this is … something at least between them.

-

Mrghhh I hate Buckleming dialogue so much especially when Lucifer is saying it. Starting with “I don’t know what to say” is admitting writing weakness, that they didn’t have a hook or enough sense of the characters for them to come up with any declaration or question or comment that would have been more meaningful. Even just a sense of drama to have Lucifer introduce himself and Jack to immediately ask his first question.

“Why does everyone hate you?”

Because you SUCK

Also: apparently no one wants to tell Jack in graphic detail all the pain and suffering that Lucifer has inflicted to them personally >.>

And then, Lucifer said, yeah we’ve been waiting for this moment all season in a way, but not only is his blathering on but then when asked a hard question, it turns into an excuse to make him say “fake news” and sure the comparing him to Trump thing is funny a few times (I mean he was literally possessing a president when Jack was conceived) but it’s taking tension out of this moment entirely. This should be for Jack, and he doesn’t deserve this awful writing where nothing Lucifer says matters, because he’s just rambling on in generalities and answers which sound like all the moaning he’s ever moaned about.

Like, yeah, sorry kiddo, your bio dad is a whining whiner who has had the same line about how misunderstood he is as long as we’ve known him, which he usually says when standing on a literal pile of corpses he made while complaining no one gets him and everyone typecasts him as evil.

But yeah, Jack’s question is just met with rubbish being spewed, instead of Lucifer even trying to explain the misunderstandings he’s had personally with TFW

-

He’s just talking about how humans suck and are easily led into temptation instead of focussing on why he feels the need to do that.

-

Oh him talking about Kelly to Jack is absolutely revolting. I’m confiscating the nougat child and BL can have him back when they earn him.

Thank goodness Cas is here to scowl at Lucifer for us.

“That’s a vast over-simplification” thanks buddy.

But yeah he’s right, the point is that Lucifer is talking in ways where he can rabbit on about ethics and shit without falling into real human pain. He doesn’t talk about how his betrayed Kelly’s trust, tried to kill her, or sent a minion to harass her while calling her the container. He talks about how awesome it was to kiss her. (And not even getting into him cheerfully talking about losing his virginity to Kelly like it was some sweet first love thing rather than rape by deception and some new gross evil he had discovered was a horrible thing to do to people.)

-

Also, fuck Buckleming for pretending they can stump Cas with “I was locked up for eternity so how did I do all this evil?” we literally have seen how. It’s called the plot of the fucking show.

It’s ethics as angels would learn it 101.

WE FUCKING MET GADREEL A FEW YEARS AGO, MAYBE ASK HIM

-

Cain who?

-

AZAZEL? You fuckers killed the last YED like 4 weeks ago

-

Fuck you entirely

-

That is in ratio of intelligence and easy answer on hand to presented moment, the biggest stupidity drop they’ve ever made. And that’s saying something.

-

Somewhere Edlund is clutching his head and he doesn’t know why but he doesn’t feel so good.

-

ABBADON?

-

So, there’s this place called “hell”…

-

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmrgghghhghghgfghfgghfhaskjfhaskjghfsjlasdjaghfs paskfh;asdgkflsdjg sgkjhlfk gha

-

Well, the zen from yoga lasted all of like 4 minutes of episode

-

Anyway now we have to deal with Lucifer’s hurr blurr about waaah God locked me up because I stood up for myself and told the truth, which, again. One note character. He met Chuck and didn’t even change. Rowena got more character development out of meeting Chuck than Lucifer did. Heck, I think even Cas got a little personal satisfaction just from ignoring him and finding a clearer sense that his path doesn’t lie with God’s validation.

And then he starts talking about how garbage humans are and we get Cas’s reaction because Cas loves humanity, and Lucifer is like “he loved humans so much he couldn’t see their flaws” and Cas is like excuse you I tell Dean to get his muddy boots off the chairs in the Bunker like six times a day but I still fucking married him.“

-

But telling Jack how humans suck is not, like, the best path, because Jack has spent a lot of time bonding with humans.

-

"I had my reasons, I just want the opportunity to get better” dude, you are so the abusive fuckwad of a drunk father who comes stumbling in late to the kid’s life, promising to do better while in no way capable of it because mean and selfish person…

-

Jack’s micro nod to wanting to do better shows that despite every indication that this was one of the worst written conversations ever, Lucifer has somehow manipulated him with this nugget that Jack feels like he wants to be a good person and Lucifer’s promise he wants to be a better person is affecting him, and A: Alex is a great actor to try and sell this and B: honestly Jack falling for that garbage rant is like… the second biggest stupidity drop ever >.>

-

Cas is like, fuck this entire concept you fucking fuckers, I’m out of here to go sit with Gabriel wherever he is. We’re gonna… go skip rocks.

-

Nope, Cas went for emotional back up, seeing that Jack was starting to be suckered in by this and decided he needed Sam, Dean and Mary to come Winchester some sense into Jack

-

Uncle Gabriel is having a great side adventure

He is probably doing the equivalent of End!Cas in this camp.

-

Ew they’re sitting together, just chilling ew ew ew ew ew

Lucifer going on about how Jack’s grandfather is literally God, trying to stir a little egomania in Jack.

Remember in 13x07 when he was so excited to know if Jack killed anyone? If he had a killer instinct?

-

Yay Dean comes to shout at Jack and Lucifer, I have never been happier to tick the Everyone Is Irrationally Angry BL Bingo Square.

-

“Dean, he’s in chains.”  
“His mouth isn’t.”

That’s the good side of Buckleming banter. Have we swapped writers?

-

“I need to know about my powers. My family.”  
“Jack, we are your family.”

Oh no, Cas is starting to sound a bit desperate. Pleading with Jack to remember he’s their family. I don’t wike it *hands Cas a blanket*

-

Sam showing up like, “You have no idea who Lucifer really is”

Like, I know it’s horrible but could you go into graphic detail right about now?

Or… is he still bound by the promise to let Lucifer see Jack?

-

“Jack…”  
“Dean! He’s my father!”

Aaaaack, so there’s the slip from 13x01 where we thought he meant Lucifer but it was actually Cas, and 13x09 where he disowns Lucifer casually and talks about how they’re his real family instead…

Oh ew I paused the screen on Lucifer looking all smug, hang on

Anyway, yeah. This is the first time Jack has proclaimed that, and I think this is revealing the greatest miscommunication this season - something we picked out a while back, in the first few episodes, about how everyone was so unwilling to tell Jack just how horrible Lucifer even was. I mean. I don’t think he even knows for sure that he’s the reason why Cas was dead? And does he know how Sam was destroyed by having powers BECAUSE he was raised to be Lucifer’s vessel? And - even basic info like this, if not the murder and torture in his wake…

Without telling Jack the harsh truth, he’s vulnerable to falling prey to Lucifer’s manipulations, because for him, new to the world, it’s just not a given that Lucifer is evil. Even “speak of the devil” is ironic, because they DON’T speak about him, and so that phrase is meaningless to Jack because it doesn’t describe anything about evilness.

And I think this goes back in a way to the theme of confronting trauma, that TFW just do not talk about what has hurt them, aren’t open when they ARE hurting, at least until it’s too late, and so the damage that Lucifer has done to them, even when he can taunt he’s in a room full of all his favourites to kill and torture, when he’s killed Rowena twice, tried to kill Gabriel and Dean, and caused the worst suffering to Sam, they just aren’t a Lucifer damage support group >.> And all season they never told Jack a full story about who they were, what they’ve done, and what has happened to them along the way…

-

Anyway I guess Edoras is moving to Helm’s Deep now?

-

Ew Jack and Lucifer are walking together

I can’t even see Cas in shot so I’m gonna assume he’s bringing up the rear with Uncle Gabriel

-

I mean

I hope someone friggin told Gabriel they were leaving. He’s gonna pop back to camp in half an hour like, so I looked everywhere and I could not find - waaait a minute. Where is everyone? Are we playing hide and seek? Sexy hide and seek? …. Nope, I’ve just been forgotten.

I’m not in this episode, am I?

-

Anyway Dean sends Sam back to lurk on the Jack and Lucifer conversation

Which leaves Mary and Dean free to chat!

Dean is like, I am listening but I am also sulking. About everything. Mary starts explaining that Nougat is getting hardened by war, having been fighting and losing people. Turning into one of them, a scarred, miserable Winchester.

I love that Mary is defending Jack, that she has spent so much time with him - more than anyone else - that she is the sympathetic character towards Jack. He’s not an object to obtain to her, he’s very much a kid who has landed in it and is doing his best.

And, of course, a surrogate for the sons she never got to know growing up, when they were being fucked up in the exact same way Jack is currently being fucked up, which means, hopefully, she will learn to relate to them better through seeing what Jack goes through??

And cut to Jack telling Sam that he was telling his father that together they can take down Michael. Which… Isn’t super reassuring tbh, if you flip it to season 5 where Lucifer getting a surefire powerful boost like a Nougat to help him take out Michael would have been dooooooom and that is why they sent Jesse on a surfing holiday in Australia.

-

This also means Sam has to walk alongside Lucifer and Jack all chill and like… we’re on a walk together

-

Ooops and Sam is like, but that’s not the plan, and Jack is like, hi, while you were gone I fixated on killing my AU!Uncle Mikey.

-

Again, Mary reasons that Jack’s interest in Lucifer is not unexpected, based on curiosity, and Dean complains about the threat that Lucifer corrupts him. Mary sounds both confident in Jack not being evil that it seems a little laughable to her, and also that Jack will soon see Lucifer’s true nature.

And honestly, this is the longest Lucifer has held it together possibly EVER without doing something petty. Maybe just because with the handcuffs on he can’t get irritated and melt people who are annoying him. I’m not sure how much restraint he has left not to say something wildly wrong. Like a homophobic relative at a family dinner with all your nice gay family, and you know Some Shit will leave their mouth sooner or later, even though they’re playing it nice and got a pride pin before they knocked on the door.

-

Mary is proud of her big gay family

-

sorry that metaphor wandered off

-

not sorry.

-

Hi Cas, love it when you *gestures him walking innocuously around a corner*

“Hey, did you find him?”

“No, Gabriel isn’t in this episode for some reason. I think BL have a restraining order?”

-

LOL here he is! RUN LIL GUY RUN!

“ANGELS!”

-

Aw no, the handcuffs. They were Dean n Cas’s personal ones.

-

blah blah joke about impotence, Lucifer got to melt some things so he might be able to stay chill for a while longer having scratched the itch to murder…

-

I just took a lil break to complain to Mittens about the geography, she assured me Singer Salvage Yard isn’t in South Dakota in the AU, and I’m just like… debating whether I think this is better or worse. it’s a headache, for sure

-

Hi AU!Bobby! They immediately discuss how Bobby decided not to put his salvage yard in Sioux Falls because the weather sucks, and I am sitting here wondering if TJW looked at the script and was like… there’s no Gabriel… they WALKED from Ohio to Bobby’s on the way to Kentucky… I -

-

Why do they always give me their scripts to un-fuck?

-

AU Bobby makes me miss Bobby while simultaneously filling the void not having Bobby puts in me and I feel weird

He’s telling them their idea sucks in colourful language and it’s like oh I am home, but at the same time… it’s not in Sioux Falls

-

Dean automatically protective of Charlie when Ketch is around and again, the weirdest feeling that Ketch killed Charlie hits me, but he still didn’t and it’s still just because BL like him so much they’ve made him their new toy.

-

Bleh more Jack and Lucifer

He’s now explaining the archangels to Jack. Mansplaining, in fact, since Jack already knows.

it seems this was just a way to say they were both tortured by Michael in order to bond some more

Lucifer forces Jack to do a high five and Jack is baffled

-

“That’s your Uncle Gabe” *points at him throwing rocks at a car* Jesus christ he’s literally… off throwing rocks… I was kidding when I said he was off doing it earlier… I was kidding… holy shit they literally forgot to write Gabriel into this episode…. in the script it was “then there’s your uncle gabe” without pointing, just, in the abstract, like, yeah, he exists, and Jack is like yeah I sort of noticed him existing. And then they both pause. Funny, that. Gabriel existing. Anyway - and they move on?

-

Woah, no, they’re actually going to talk to him.

Hey, Gabriel, did you know you’re in this episode?

His expression says, wow, no I did not. But now I hear them coming over, I need to Deal With This Shit

-

Lucifer describes him as “class clown” which is automatically reducing him back down to the Trickster, and of course he’s said tricks are for kids and is trying to be all mature and the new version of Gabriel.

-

I hope new and improved Uncle Gabriel tells Jack what’s what, even if it’s just with eyebrows and pointed looks

-

“And you’re an ass clown”

That works.

-

Oh ew, Lucifer immediately pulls Gabriel’s torture on him as a hey how are you lol that was funny when you were tortured and metaphorically raped for 7 years huh?

Jack, again, seems to lack the context of what happened to Gabriel, the state they found him in, all the stuff we’ve seen on screen, so the dramatic irony of what we know vs what Jack knows…

Also how does Lucifer even know?

-

Oh whatever.

-

Gabriel has no time for this, and turns to walk off, like, fine, I didn’t even want to be in your stupid episode anyway. Lucifer follows, Jack walking along beside him, eyebrows furrowed.

-

Gabriel has a headache at Lucifer rambling on (and they’ve literally just forgotten about Raphael. Wonderful.) Anyway, super relatable.

Here he goes. “You think Dad was a bad guy and you were a victim?” Well Scout will be happy, Gabriel standing up for the ole God n Gabe relationship. I mean, much as it sucks, Gabriel still has a connection with Chuck that no one else does, just in personality.

“That was just your excuse.”  
“For what?”  
“For it all, Lucifer! For it all!”

Thank fucking God for Gabriel. He wasn’t even meant to be here so he’s like the one person who can call Lucifer out, from outside the narrative, fed up of this whole stupid charade.

Gabriel is not a Buckleming character, he’s here because he deigned to be, and he will leave on his terms too.

-

(I’ve legit been having issues that I keep thinking Speight-directed episodes are Gabriel episodes, and at this point he’s such a meta character to me I literally think he’s transcended the story)

-

Nice of him to walk off screen with both middle fingers raised.

-

Oh my GOD how stupid was that trap that Charlie just fell for?

My unspoken comment from earlier that the dumbest drop in intelligence Buckleming ever inflicted on a character was Charlie’s death feels like I should have said it, because making her fall for that dumbass trap was just… wow.

-

Wow.

-

Blah blah manufactued drama, Ketch has stubble now, apparently a conscience about not letting Charlie get killed because Dean was once attached to his world’s version of her

-

Goddd I am with Andy the sceptic about their fairytale world where everything is pretty. They don’t want to abandon the fight, and like, there’s a sizeable chance Dean and Sam just wanna shove Mary through a portal with them and call it a day.

Why are we getting this when we could be getting Sam and Dean learning from Mary how they need to fight for this cause against Michael? Whyyyyyyy. This whole plan is so stupid.

I mean, it wouldn’t be wholly stupid for Sam to pop back through the rift, grab all the weapons he’s promising, and come back to arm them, in their world, on their turf, somewhere defensible from angels.

Like, even the odds a bit so they can finish this fight so they can take Mary and Jack home and stop stressing about this

-

Now Sam’s making his Inspiring Speech of the season, about how even if they aren’t people from the AU and were never born there, all these masses of people fighting back are still like them and represent what they do. Like, how all the random hikers you might meet know vampire lore these days. Everyone’s a hunter in these times.

-

Andy narrows his eyes

-

cut to: Ketch being tortured and using American monopoly references to fuck with the angels.

he is presumably secretly American, because there’s no way he’d casually think of American locations on the board unless he coincidentally grew up with an American monopoly board for some reason

-

While complaining about this Mittens reminded me that Metatron made a reference to always winning by building hotels on the expensive square and that gives us an indirect connection between the two of them for some reason.

-

Ooooooooh the exterior reveals they’re being tortured in the creepy Gas n Sip.

Well. I wonder who is about to show up

-

Twitchy!Castiel

-

Who inexplicably looks 10 years younger than our Cas.

Dean really did a fucking number on him.

-

Anyways of course Castiel is the expert… He’s terrifying when he gets going, and this one hasn’t been Dean’d.

-

Our Cas seems to be doing some scary manhandling on this guy

-

And some really scary looming

-

Uhoh

-

And that was with one lil look from Dean, like, go on, babe, read his mind and do what you do

-

No, apparently he wasn’t even reading the guy’s mind, he was just hurting him

-

Lucifer’s whining, in the least breaking news to ever break.

Gabriel’s like, Dean told us to stay behind, because I’m not in this episode, so I have to babysit your dumb ass before you say anything else stupid to my nephew.

-

“Do you see any version of this where he sticks by you?”

I mean that’s probably what’s stressing Lucifer out, knowing he has nothing to offer as a father. Gabriel is kind of enjoying it. And sitting watching Lucifer from a distance, where he can mock him. Again, he seems weirdly out of the story, the one person who isn’t affected by all the bullshit and somehow has this glossy shine on him, un-Buckleming’d even as the empire crumbles around him.

It’s like… he doesn’t feel a part of all this because he’s seeing clearly and calling out Lucifer in real time instead of standing dumbly while Lucifer poses questions to prove he’s good that only a 7 month old babyman would fall for.

-

“He’s a kid.  He likes shiny objects and magic tricks.”

:’)

“But he’s not like you. You can see it in his eyes.” YUPPERS. He has Cas’s eyes.

his father’s eyes

-

(Thinking of which, I had to go back because my video went a bit wonky… am I right in thinking AU!Castiel has a bad eye? That’s not meta interesting at aaall)

-

Gabriel mentions his mother’s bloodline, the Winchesters’ influence… is Cas included in that?

-

“He’ll see who - what - you are.”

“I’ve changed.”

“Dude. It’s me. I’ve known you since the stars were made. You can’t change. You’re incapable of empathy, love. You live to be worshipped! Or feared! Or both!”

And now Gabriel is calling out that Lucifer says that God made up all the lies about him, which has been his fallback for literally ever about how woe is me misunderstood God was so meeeean

It’s like Gabriel and Lucifer were having that argument back in 5x19 and then Lucifer killed Gabriel and then 7 years passed and now they’re alone together again and they just pick up where they left off.

Gabriel praising how humans are innocent and beautiful has weird overtones of how protective Dean was of the Scooby Gang and I think that is adorable.

-

Gabriel is officially tearing Lucifer a new one after dropping by to be in the episode and I am gonna stan this fucker forever.

-

LOL he made Lucifer cry

-

God, I mean I am never ever going to feel sympathetic to Lucifer, but if Gabriel helps him like, sacrifice himself for Jack later at some point, I’m cool with that.

-

AAAH AU CASTIEL IS THE WORST. I HATE IT. MISHA, NO

-

Nice coat though.

In a horrifying way.

They did, however, find a coat that actually makes Misha’s shoulders look huge in a sexy way

-

you can hear the Cas voice in there, but it’s so messed up.

-

This guy is BFFs with Bartholomew I bet.

-

okay I’m rewinding and actually trying to pay attention to wtf he’s saying.

-

It’s so messed up that he’s in a Gas n Sip. It’s like showing how broken his soul is. And the fact his soul is a Gas n Sip absolutely murders me

-

Also AU Castiel doesn’t have a soul, probably, unlike our Cas

-

He’s mirroring Dick Frigging Roman while eyeing up Charlie and telling her there aren’t many like her.

-

Castiel mirroring Dick in a Gas n Sip is how to cram in the most awfulness you possibly could to show a ruined version of Cas.

-

He’s parting his hair on the other side.

-

It seems Castiel pretty much has destroyed himself by psychically harming humans.

Can we rewind so our Cas stops torturing that other guy so that he doesn’t remotely turn into this guy?

-

OH NO, I was gonna ask where Jack was back in the previous scene but it seems he’s flapped off to deal with this before I could ask him where he was.

Now he’s gonna meet Worst!Castiel

-

Meanwhile: stabby stabby, the rest of the Winchesters are here. Never mind, Cas got the intel from that other guy. Jack isn’t going rogue :P

-

I hope party!Cas doesn’t meet worst!Castiel

-

Party!Cas is beating up Worst!Castiel

-

“More than one of us. Fascinating.”  
“I’ve gotten used to it.”

Party!Cas is basically just a bundle of one-liners in a trenchcoat.

-

LOL Dean freeing Ketch but will we ever be free of Dean x Ketch nonsense?

-

Sam randomly hugs AU Charlie because he hasn’t got over the guilt of getting our Charlie killed, and can’t separate the two on instint of seeing her face again and this is awful.

When I said more hugs I meant more NICE hugs

“Sorry”

She punches him in a hey it’s cool we all freak out sometimes

-

Oh jesus christ after the saving hanging Ketch by getting all up in his space, now I turn out to have had the screen paused on Ketch and Dean getting all cosy and looking at each other in alarming proximity

“oooh… hello. You saving me? It’s about bloody time.”

Dean looks furious

good.

-

“You aligned yourself to humans?”  
“I *vastly* prefer them to angels”

Love you too, babe

“Don’t think you are better than me. We are the same.”  
“Yes. We are.” *STAB*

Bye bye worst!Castiel

Man, I never thought I’d be glad to see Cas die, but that was satisfying watching Cas kill this awful version of him who had been utterly destroyed by being an angel while affirming to himself that humans are the best. And being an angel sucks and is destructive to his very sense of self.

I like that a lot.

-

Long live Party!Cas

-

And we begin and end the season with a dead Cas

-

I mean we’re not quite at the end but we’re close enough that this counts as bookending symmetry.

-

“For whatever reason, I have a good feeling about you two”

it seems a little worrying that apparently the entire lot unanimously voted to go to the pretty AU. I think they’re making a joke that Bobby feels some sort of cosmic fatherly vibe towards them but in truth Bobby complained they were idjits with terrible plans quite often, as he did earlier… I’m not sure it’s going to be good that everyone Exoduses with them and I feel like them celebrating a win with 10 minutes to go before whatever leads into the finale is a terrible thing. All in all we’ve got a last 10 minutes of a Buckleming episode vibe going on and I do not like it.

-

Okay Lucifer helping Dean revive the bus is the weirdest cooperation I’ve ever seen on this show.

-

Making Lucifer drive so they can keep an eye on him is the worst idea ever and I don’t care what Dean justifies it with, Gabriel came rushing in from left field to say hey hey hey this is a dumbass idea and Dean’s like shut up you’re not in this episode but Gabriel is the one voice of reason here because he’s the guy who’s not in the episode so can see it for what it is.

Dean’s supposed to always want to drive.

-

Where is Nougat going?

Why are you even upset?

-

Oh, he’s realised they’re all fleeing to plan to kill Michael later and even though this plan was all worked out a while back he is reacting now - is it just that they didn’t include him in the planning and he buckleminged between the cracks of an episode ABOUT HIM and only found out now…

He’s like but I wanna kill Michael NOW

Okay, no, he’s got a cool heroic mindset

but you know what, after hanging with Lucifer, there is something about how they’ve put Jack in a position where he is driven to Kill Michael just like Lucifer was originally driven to Kill Michael. Of course everything around them and the utter horror of worst!Cas proves that killing Michael is necessary for this world to even have a sliver of a chance of survival, but at the same time, Jack is now irrationally stuck on a mission purpose identical to the one that once powered Lucifer to start the entire apocalypse. And having Jack mirroring that need, to the point of irrationally leaving the party bus when the plan IS to regroup, arm up and return to kill Michael, shows that he has   
-

At least this one brewed up fast, because the longer you leave the apocalypse to stew, the more complicated it is to start a fight with Michael??

-

Sam goes after Jack because he cares and then Lucifer saunters over because he wants to latch onto Jack, and once again we get Jack caught between two parent figures - in his flashes of choosing who he wants to be after thinking about Kelly’s message he had flashes of both Lucifer and Sam - not Cas and Dean.

Look

I’m just sayin’ as a random aside

which I should not be saying but I mean I hope I earned some sam!girl cred earlier so let me ruin this

because they’re framing it as Lucifer vs Sam

it sets aside Cas n Dean

and they’re like

A different set of parents on like, a different level. If Jack has 4 dads, Cas and Dean are one pair and Sam and Lucifer are the other… Thematically… but like… also Cas and Dean are weirdly in a different sort of world when it comes to relating to Jack apparently.

-

Sam is all concern about Jack, Lucifer tries to talk Jack out of it with seeming concern which is really just about how he isn’t very good at fighting Michael. Lol.

-

UUUGHHHH Sam having to hear Jack say “my father makes a valid point” and then Lucifer claps Jack on the shoulder and walks off with him in front of Sam and it feels like Lucifer somehow retroactively has kicked off this whole nonsense JUST to spite Sam.

-

Oh my GOD Dean isn’t even ON the party Bus with Lucifer what the heck who PLANNED this plan

-

I like Gabriel just chilling with like, an RPG launcher or something.

nice callback to last episode re: lol penis

-

Also Jack is sitting with Uncle Gabriel in the jeep! Good! I hope he is saying lots of good sensible Nice Uncle Who Gives You Candy things to Jack, and then makes a coin appear out of his ear.

-

Portal’s closing

Run run run

-

Amazingly, Lucifer’s maths about the portal were not wrong?

I mean… do we just assume that that was a lucky guess?

-

Rowena has been reading the entire time, and I can tell why we haven’t seen her since the start of the episode but it’s still a total waste of her.

Maybe Gabriel was slipping off and hooking up with her whenever he wasn’t in the episode.

-

You know I am not 100% Rowena was in this episode either. I do appreciate her and Ketch making eye contact like, oh, you.

-

With 6 minutes to go you know some serious shit is about to go down

-

JACK IS BACK

-

Lol Sam is like no you stay here, Lucifer. Fuck you being in the same universe as Jack for any length of time.

-

Okay we got a Mary and an AU Bobby here, good, good. And a Charlie! Wonderful!

The last 6 minutes of the episode might be all like, 30 people coming through the rift one by one to dramatic music.

If the Winchesters don’t make it back then there’s going to be one hell of a kegger thrown here by all the gnarly post-apocalypse peeps suddenly filling the Bunker unsupervised.

-

CAS!

-

He does not count as a responsible adult. Party!Cas is in the Bunker, currently unsupervised, with Rowena.

That is going to be a fucking wild kegger.

-

Oh good they sped up the dramatic entering the portal bit when it was randos we’ve never met who are now all filling the Bunker

-

Guys, you do realise if you leave BOTH archangels on the other side of the rift… you don’t have any grace on YOUR side of the rift?

-

I mean

that… did occur to you?

-

Oh great the angels just crashed down on top of them and of all the people on screen, we get a close up of Andy the doubter dead. Nice going, BL

-

Michael! Badass wings in the dust!

-

Oh that’s why Asmodeus did the ridiculous grace hurling. They wanted Lucifer to do it to Michael.

-

Now Michael is doing it to Lucifer

Just… like… kill him for us… put us out of our misery…

-

Gabriel, no, don’t do this… D: If I have to watch you die again I’m suing.

-

Like, worst time to suddenly show up in the episode.

-

Dude you can not die,  you have to come back and run Heaven and bang Rowena on the weekends.

-

Sam and Dean are like… just not running away.

-

I’m suing.

-

Gabriel better be behind Michael and stab him now

-

I mean I’m just assuming he’s standing behind a tree like, wow, it’s amazing how often people fall for that

-

“How did you think this was gonna end?”

I love you Sammy

You get the no.1 dad mug

-

Oh good, Michael is alone with a weakened miserable Lucifer. Can you just stomp him out of rage now?

-

Cut to: Bunker kegger.

I immediately spot Cas and Dean standing together not in the main party, with AU Charlie. AU Bobby and Mary together, Rowena sitting down needing a rest, and Sam wearing just a t-shirt and chilling with her. Ketch and the girl from the vampire mine sitting either side of the stairs, probably both like ???? about events, from completely opposite directions.

-

AU Charlie and Ketch are weirdly friends. I am so conflicted.

-

FINALLY FOUND JACK

he doesn’t look very happy. He’s a corner child. Sitting in the corner. With a beer he is like 20 and a bit years too young to drink.

-

Anyway guess Samwitch is still on the cards even if we can be really miserable about Gabwena or whatever you call it ending too soon.

-

Cas and Dean are talking about I guess a toast to Gabriel, presumably prompted by Cas being really sad about Gabriel, probably because now there’s no one to teach him magic tricks to amuse Jack.

-

Cas really isn’t much fun at parties, now I think about it

I’m not backing down from my stance. He just needs to get BETTER at parties.

-

“Been here 5 minutes and he’s taken over the joint”

I’ve wanted to see Bobby in the Bunker a million years and while I am miserable it’s not the real thing, it does still feel at least kinda right.

*sighs forever*

-

What is Jack going to do

-

Why are people toasting Sam and Dean but not Cas

-

Cas isn’t toasting them either, he’s standing there with his hands in his pockets like yeah I always knew these two idiots were the best, thanks for catching up.

-

Jack continues staring into the void

Cas continues standing there

-

Awww no why did you give us a closeup of Gabriel lying there? Also his eyes were wide open. What does that mean? I mean is it because no one’s bothered to close them, or is it a symbolic thing?

anyway Michael you are not stabbing Lucifer fast enough. Don’t bargain with him. He just wants to go be a pest in the main world.

-

What the hell was that last look about? UGH. Do not want.

-

tl;dr Gabriel is probably fine. He sneaked through the portal when no one was looking and flapped off. 

Rowena will probably get a series of bizarre sexy presents delivered to whatever hotel room she’s in

Cas needs to work at parties

Jack is contemplating what the hell fathers’ day even is.


	23. 13x23

Ah, crumbs, we’re here, lads.

Expectations: Dabb’s big ole curveball. Nougat isn’t doing very well. Michael is surprisingly underwhelming. AU!Bobby probably dies really dramatically.

You know what we haven’t had for a while? Dabb’s motherfucking car continuity nonsense. I’m going to throw in: some petty reason for me to be pissed off with this episode while not being pissed off with whatever is annoying everyone else for some reason.

-

Season finale rule: watch the montage through, rewind, snark.

“That was awesome.”

DUDE. This is Dabb era - this show wants to be FUN and it wants to make you grin through the montage instead of weep. Like sure some shit happens…

Anyway this is now in the top, like, 3 of all Road So Far’s just for the intro.

“My name is Dean Winchester” with him eating pie, getting judged by Sam, and then the 13x12 fight, aka the best fight the brothers have ever had, making even the 2x15 scuffle over the money clip (STREET SMARTS - Gabriel has them) look boring. Introducing Sam as the “big guy” instead of how in 13x08 where the pie clip is from, Dean is the dummy who likes pie and Sam is the smart one, we see Dean in his own words (his depressed, miserable words from 13x01 recut for the fun intro) as a pie loving dude and Sam as his scrappy larger (younger) brother, with them acting like total idiots. “We hunt monsters” is layered over Dean’s sarcastic gesture to Mia in 13x04 but instead of it being from the depths of despair and lashing out with sarcasm, it’s repurposed to a funny “lol this is my life!” kinda sit com intro where Dean is the canny 1st person narrator telling us like, welcome to the show.

Rowena answers, pfft, this is boring, you got any music? Because we all know what’s coming and she’s been doing an admirable job this season being kinda meta but now they repurpose her to be talking to this meta!Dean, like, wow good for you, can we get to the music we’re all here for now laddie?

And so it all kicks off and gives us the action we were holding our breaths for.

Mixing high drama with angry giant stuffed dinosaur, always got to bring the tone back to what the show IS, not what it is pretending to be.

We get the best “rest your weary head” in a while too - Cas and Jack going sleepy times, 3 beheadings, and Cas knocking out Ketch. Noice.

PLUS “cry no more” was the butcher from 13x11 doing the boo hoo crying gesture. :D

The show is making sure we know just how wonderfully self-aware it is.

-

I like that the “welcome to the team” has a response of Rowena looking a lil self-satisfied, and also the ongoing Gabriel and Rowena connections that it was originally said to him when he was rejecting it, though we just see him in the montage helping out.

-

“Team Free Will 2.0” is said over all these characters, including Mom, Jack, Gabriel, Rowena, AUs Charlie and Bobby… Kevin and Dontatello were in this montage too, together, and idk if they will be important since they’re both dead (the AU needs a new prophet, who theoretically will now have activated) but it does include everyone who was helping this season, even Ketch. Who… I forgot, not sure if montage forgot aside from a glimpse, has already slipped brain.

Like, I love DHJ and his actual on-screen presence is so good to make us loathe Ketch. The downside is: I loathe Ketch and don’t willingly think about him, even while appreciating the hell out of the performance and actor :P

-

I like the montage of stabbing and punching Lucifer in the faceing and throat bitten out by vampiring and hugging… Like… the last few episodes were a WILD ride

-

And the last “don’t you cry no more” on the high point of them seeming to accomplish all their goals, at the cost of “only” Gabriel (who is alive and well you fucks) and now everyone in the bunker raises their glasses to toast a happy ending - you know, moments before the dramatic season finale where it all goes to shit - and Dean says “that was awesome!” to round us off, once again a sort of 1st person narrator voice, with Sam standing at his side.

The story of the recap is Sam n Dean as brothers, but with their huge family of important peeps, and very much focussed entirely on the plot of the latter half of the season where the AU stuff kicked off, because the first half was either Wayward, or the grief arc. Of the grief arc, there’s no focus on it, and the moments from it we saw were taken out of context to re-tell the story as if it is goofy and fun. Cas is obviously present in clips but he’s just a part of the team, with the emphasis on the whole family they’ve built for themselves. This does seem to come across as not just 1st person POV Dean but in a way a strange commentary on how he sees it all right now, that Cas is taken for granted as there now, the grief is behind him, but the wackiness of this huge win and collecting all their family back on the correct side of the AU wall at long last. Since Cas has been back and working with them, and all just cool, for a while, he factors into it only as an ally, and in a way such a stalwart and constant presence that the excitement about all the others overwhelms him, as since the midseason he’s the only one who HASN’T needed to be reclaimed and brought back into their lives. Knowing that in a minute or so (assuming the show can’t let Sam and Dean chill any longer than that) Dean will say that stuff about original flavour TFW going to the beach together, with a vision of their future that’s about the 3 of them, as a Cas fan I feel deeply unthreatened by his lack of focus here, because his role right now is to be a part of this enormous family, and such an important part that from Dean’s POV it would be like remembering to credit his own arm for being there. Because, likewise, Sam and Dean are just around in the clips doing stuff, but the main focus is on who is being ADDED to the team. And the base team is Sam, Dean and Cas.

The COULD have done clips to ensure Sam n Dean n Cas were the core team, such as some of those nice TFW shots, or the 3 of them coming out of Scoobynatural and Dean saying how it was the best thing that ever happened to him, but I can see why the face on “that was awesome!” moment from 13x08 is used because, well, it’s absolutely perfect to go with the bookend of this montage with Rowena demanding the music…

-

Anyways. The actual episode? I guess I better…

-

Sam doing the recap of Welcome To Earth for all the assembled peeps. He does not look like he’s having fun explaining the worst of what’s going on - since he and Dean are constantly on news sites, they are extremely aware of current affairs, and mostly just can’t do anything about them.

He’s got the student’s march, Shape of Water winning best picture which he describes as craziness so I assume Sam n Dean have had to check what the lore was on fish people at some point recently… A shout out about the Cubs winning the world series which takes us back to 9x23 and Dean’s complaint to Metatron about everything he blamed him for… I see also hurricanes and fires under his elbow.

This all sucks but it is a comparison to the Apocalypse AU: this is the IMPROVED version of the world you came to. Sure, it sucks, but at least, like… running water. No mass supernatural threat actively destroying everything no matter how much we are doing it to ourselves, the monsters mostly in check by hunters, and TFW handling the supernatural threats to the universe with enough competence that at least we still have Florida.

-

Mary is wearing new plaid!! Again, lighter colours, the base obviously white, but run through with grey and red - which is her version of ominous colours. Bobby is dressed in dark plaid. The other AU refugees are largely dressed in enormous but clean knitware and comfy shirts, in muted colours, but still they have the CHOICE of colour, you know? :P

The fact they found Bobby a cap is absolutely shattering in a quiet way of what Sam n Dean must have felt.

-

“And you call where we come from Apocalypse World?”

Yep.

-

“Gang’s all here!” that is, Sam, Dean, Cas and Jack

They appear to be learning to hunt as a squad and I am not sure how to handle this because my heart never thought we’d see something like this.

Also they used to mock the Kardashians and now Dean’s casually claiming to have his own favourite, after Cas reports back the werewolf chatter about Kylie Jenner. (I think this is a Kardashian thing? I am way less exposed to them on this side of the pond.) This is like, the Kardashian Extended Universe of peeps?

-

Cas, that nice werewolf just wanted a light

-

LOL the werewolf explaining the situation and rounding off with Dean’s same line about being a Chloe man. I have no clue what’s going on with these celebs but yeah.

monsters aren’t so different from you and i

except where they eat people’s hearts

-

It’s WAY too easy to kill werewolves when you can just freeze ‘em in time. Honestly, Sam n Dean were wasting bullets since they’re competent enough to get a shot to the heart.

… How does Jack’s cosmic time distortion affect bullets? Do they go in at bullet time, but still hit with the force as if they hit at regular time? I assume so or this would be a terrible hunting technique :P

-

AW YES Bobby and Mary are bonding more. They’re walking in woods where no one has filtered out the green, and Bobby is talking about how beautiful the rain is. This is a date.

-

“Everyone seems to be settling in” yeah because you assholes left Gabriel behind so you have no grace.

-

“Rowena and Charlie are roadtripping through the southwest” They are banging so much.

“Haaa that’s trouble.” Mary knows. She’s a Cool Mom who is not homophobic, #confirmed, you can write all your shmoopy fics where Dean comes out to her and she’s fine with it without any Old Fashioned Worry.

This also means that though we didn’t see it, that bit where Charlie and Rowena chatted was a Moment.

-

She and Bobby are wearing very similar colours of dark red underneath, a green layer, and then their jackets. God bless, someone has put Mary in a leather jacket instead of shapeless huge canvas jackets.

-

The Good Times Rolling are lasting way longer than I expected. We’re 4 minutes in and it’s giving me screaming anxiety to hear that things are going well. Especially as they’ve left Ketch, Charlie and Rowena specifically out of the episode, meaning they’re planted for next season and presumably surviving.

-

Come on Bobby… You can do it. Come on dude!

“I like it here”

*lil smile*

Awwwwwwwwwwww :’)

“Is that…” “Blood.”

You guys sure know how to have a date, huh?

-

MAGGIE D:

Are there consequences to bringing over all these refugees? I hope this isn’t an anti-immigrant sentiment, by mistake. Show’s politics lean way more liberal, I’d think. If there’s some upset to the natural order and they have to die or be put back that’s like… not good…

-

“LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL” See, I wondered why we were having such a long opening, and there it is… something awful had to happen before Dabb could show us that title in good conscience.

-

NOW we’re on the scene I assume turns into the beach chat.

-

Sam and Dean walking through the corridors talking about how Jack did good. Hey, 13x14, this is the opposite POV of Jack’s lil Zach dream we opened the episode on. I hope he’s listening :D

-

Dean keeps smiling to himself. Now we get the promo scene - the context to it was that Dean was thinking that Jack might actually help them truly rid the world of monsters and everyone can be happy and chill and go to the MF beach.

-

Jack is Sam’s optimism, his ability to conceptualise an end where he doesn’t have to keep hunting. Dean’s too, but Sam’s struggles with a happy ending were being shown a lot over this season. Dean even being able to visualise it is the victory here.

-

God I want the beach episode.

-

Anyway, this moment of the “good times” is a very brief respite from the nonsense that seems to be lasting at least a week or so, that Sam and Dean have been able to RELAX and for me that is the most important thing this episode establishes: I think they have actually had a good night of sleep here and there. Wherever we go from here you can write a whole week to month of fan fic gap Dean n Cas snuggling while getting used to this life.

-

Hey, I swear the promo ended differently - maybe just because it was always insisting on going into a tiny box and telling us where to watch other CW videos or whatever, but the way Dean is pulled away - could have sworn it was a scream, not whatever this is…

-

OH, NOUGAT. Don’t have troubles!!!!!!!!!

-

Now we have Dean waking Jack up, vs Jack waking Dean up in 13x06.

-

I’m gonna hug this life-size Porg my mum’s BF gave me from a claw machine in the arcade on our beach (TFW should go) and just… sit for a mo. I’m not ready for Nougat Son to be having problems. I rewatched all of season 13 in the last week and I am Extremely Attached all over again.

-

Imma name the Porg “Nougat”

-

“You were just having a bad dream.” “Sorry,” he says, sitting cross legged and smol. “You don’t have to apologise, I have them all the time.” Oh DEAN. “You do?”

Can we like, get some hugs up in this place?

-

Like, as a doubly whammy this cutie pie is upset about the death of fandom’s former fave lil cutie pie, Kevin Tran, dying miserably. It’s like a miserable cutie pie face off with Kevin’s tearful pre-death expression, and Jack’s horrified expression.

How old would Kev be now?

23, apparently.

-

“I wasn’t strong enough” Sweetie, this is how Sam ended up on his dark arc, in season 4, reacting to Dean’s death. You need to be CAREFUL.

-

Dean immediately starts giving the Inspiring Speech, and I freakin hope that Kevin died for Dean to give an effective speech, because Kev’s least-favourite part of being an adopted Winchester was Dean’s attempts to give inspiring speeches.

Don’t say “in this life”

He does laugh at Jack thinking he’s not strong, because he thinks Jack is amazing

-

“Noboy’s perfect, but we can get better”

No.1 Dad Mug changes hands

-

“You’re family, Kid, and we look after our own.”

I weeeeeeep.

9 minutes into the episode, and Dean has a reason to be upset by bad things occurring

I legit did not think we’d make it 3

-

JACK DON’T CRY

-

He’s still not trying to resurrect people. It’s interesting how he’s gone all season with infinite powers but has stuck very much to stuff he’s already done, and stuff he’s unconsciously unlocked, except for not repeating the angel ressing trick. It’s almost like he doesn’t believe he CAN do the kind of things people expect him to, and while it’s narratively neat to keep him to relatively few tricks, so he doesn’t wreck the stakes on everything (as we see, an average fight is completely childs’ play for him) the fact is, his potential is very much untested, and he hasn’t been straining himself to try and do things like, for example, going back to resurrect the guard, or to heal Clark after he got stabbed in the first episode. Even when he feels this huge burden of guilt that the AU refugees are his ducklings he’s raising and protecting, he doesn’t fall to his knees and try to use his powers on Maggie to make it alright. Perhaps some of it is unwillingness to use his powers on people, and a huge chunk of not knowing how to do things, but it is curious how they’ve been making Jack hold back on doing basically everything he can. If he unlocks Ultimate Powers this episode through frustration and not feeling strong enough…

-

A lot of people have been saying “I don’t - ” in frustration this season and I don’t know if it’s just something that has unconsciously been added, or if it’s something I started noticing because of Jack but people actually say it a lot and he just made it really obvious… But when he was smol and didn’t know anything, he said it a lot while at a total loss to explain himself and who he was and his powers. He genuinely didn’t know in a lot of cases, or saying “I don’t - ” made him refocus on what he did and didn’t know and come to some sort of answer, as Maggie’s friend does here, suddenly remembering that there was a boy.

-

Whoops, Jack flapped off.

-

This better not spiral.

-

OH NO. It is. This is the Gas & Go(?) built for this episode. It’s very spiky, reminiscent of the AU world, and it’s got that big ass star on top, and it’s patterened in diamonds, which are… Lucifer-y. And red. TROUBLE. This is a huge warning sign disguised as a gas station. And we know it blows up, and Jack is there.

I feel like I know how this might go and I am hugging Nougat super hard

-

JACK NO YOU CAN’T JUST ATTACK NATE OUT OF CONTEXT.

Scary lil guy with glowing eyes just accosts you out of the blue >.>

-

THE DETAIL OF NATE PULLING OUT HIS EARBUDS. I’m laughing even in distress

-

God there’s red diamonds patterened on the walls on the inside too

-

YIKES they got there fast. There’s a trail of dust and burnt rubber smell from here to the Bunker still settling.

*coughs and hands Dabb a trophy for making the Impala into a delorean*

-

JACK DON’T HIT CAS. HE WUBS YOU AND YOU CAN NOT HURT HIM.

-

Omg, Dean ready to shoot Jack because he’s out of control and knocked Cas over D: Oh no this has got bad fast. Oh no oh no oh no oh no

-

I mean, I guess if you can shoot the kid to get his attention while knowing it won’t kill him. Dean was giving him the no.1 dad speech a lil moment ago and now he’s having to shove it all down and shoot Jack to distract him from hurting a guy out of a protective rage D:

-

Can we go get Mia and see if she can counsel them all through this? Before it escalates any further? >.> Kid is clearly traumatised with PTSD from living in the Apocalypse AU for months, and just got severely triggered by Maggie’s death

-

He’s also still habitually wearing clothes like what he had when that all went down, after his early season bopping around different styles. He’s stuck :(

-

“You shot me???”  
“To get your attention!”

I mean, like, Dean is resourceful, and this is terrible parenting, and equivalent of that moment he slaps Ben to get him to focus in 6x21 (ow) except with much higher stakes that Jack is about to kill an apparently innocent guy.

-

Sam steps in with the soft words.

-

Wait, how comes this place didn’t explode

-

Well now I’m like, 10x more worried because why does it EXPLODE?

-

JACK NO STOP LITERALLY BEATING YOURSELF UP

THIS ISN’T YOUR FAULT. YOU HAVE TRAUMA AND NO ONE HAS SENT YOU TO THERAPY LIKE THEY SHOULD HAVE

-

JAAAAAACK

-

WHY IS DABB MAKING ME WATCH THIS?

-

Cas you smooth fucker, getting right into the We’re FBI and giving them aliases and everything.

-

I didn’t catch them or the names are too generic names for me to catch what the reference is so I will let people on my dash sort out what genre of music Cas just threw them into

-

OH NO the place is exploding

-

I guess this is just every time Jack gets upset he causes this destruction, because his self-loathing is how he unlocks Ultimate Power?

That’s… gonna go well for everyone

-

Oh shit, no this is Michael’s entrance. We’re still doing the truly dreadful Lazarus Rising backwards parallel deconstruction.

And Lucifer just happens to have landed on Jack right as he’s most vulnerable.

-

Michael is kinda awesome and looks amazing now he’s not washed out :D This is terrifying.

-

Hope Nate is okay because that’s going to be one hell of a mess to sweep up

-

Oh shit, is Dean going to “hey assbutt” him because

-

He missed

-

Or, gave them a few feet to move

… why couldn’t Michael just… walk around it…

-

Dean, you had a once in a lifetime opportunity to yell, “hey, assbutt” and throw a holy oil molotov at Michael, you know, that archangel, that Cas once threw a holy oil molotov and yelled, “hey, assbutt!” while doing it.

Frankly, I am disappointed.

-

Anyway the Impala can drive at supersonic speeds so they’re getting a headstart.

-

I think Michael MAY just be amused at how resourceful and funny they are, running away from him like that. Like, sure, I’ll let them do it.

-

Anyway, Jack, sweetie, pls melt Lucifer.

-

Lucifer saying that Sam is a big fat liar is beyond the pot calling the kettle black. Sam’s been assuming Lucifer would get squished by Michael because why WOULDN’T he and it let him sleep at night. Sam’s been having the best sleeps of his life. Sam hasn’t told any big fat lies for a long long time.

-

“Sam was the one who left me behind.” Oh dear. And here we are back to the manipulation.

“For everything I’ve done to him, I think I had it coming.” Lucifer playing contrite and fakely apologetic.

-

“Sam Dean and the other one” Lucifer is such a fuckin bibro

-

“We’re not human no matter how much we pretend to be” You fucker, Jack’s half human, he has perfect right to choose to live as a human and do human things, even if he does have powers too. Cas is doing it right now!

Yeah, Jack will have to go on a whole arc to figure out which one he wants to be and how it works for him, but it’s not beyond reason for him to find a peace like that.

-

Eurgh, anyway Jack’s in such a bad place, not fitting in, feeling like he’s a monster who just hurts people with his powers, that though Lucifer revels in the idea of Jack hurting people and wants to know if he enjoys it, and they have oil and water personalities, he convinces Jack that powers make him oil and water to being around humanity. Playing off how things never go right around humans - for Lucifer, that means vaporising them in annoyance when things don’t go his way, for Jack that means he doesn’t wanna hurt them and feels horrified when he messes up and does so.

-

“What do *we* do?”  
“Leave.”

He wants to take Jack to space.

-

Nooooo Jack, you can’t go to Star Wars.

Oh god you’re adorable, and I regret naming a Porg after you because I literally just played into Lucifer’s scheme of winning over the kid with shiny things and Star Wars merch D:

-

Also: now suspicious of my mum’s BF for winning me over with Star Wars merch

He’s a pretty un-Lucifer-like guy though

-

“Sam Dean and Castiel… they’ll miss me.” DON’T GO TO SPACE THEN

-

This plotline is literally just an abusive father showing up at the house when the parents aren’t home with a bunch of expensive presents, and taking advantage of a vulnerable kid liking shiny things and being unable to see the abuse tactic of excessive niceness while the dick trying to do it to them wants them to like them more and think they’re better and more reasonable than the parents who are trapped in the bind of being responsible so having to enforce things like bedtimes D:

-

This episode has such a weird vibe of 10x23 where there was a genunie danger that Death was going to punt Dean into space (okay, no, the unnamed as yet “Empty”)

-

Ew ew ew ew

“You up for an adventure, buddy?”

“I’d like that.”

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

He is a SNAKE

-

Meanwhile Bobby and Mary are working the case. Or wondering if Maggie just died because someone killed her, and this is something the police might deal with, and the fact she came through an alternate universe portal is the only complication.

-

I love how Mary’s response to Jack is a happy “Jack!” She loves him so much :’)

-

Go punch Lucifer.

Mary resists with every fibre of her being, for Jack.

-

Is Jack getting him to resurrect Maggie?

-

“What are you doing?”  
“What I have to”

*stabs that phrase with a knitting needle*

Does she think he pulled Lucifer back just to do this, when no one else would?

Jack also sees there’s some awfulness involved in this, but…

“It’s my second chance.”

GETTING LUCIFER TO DO IT FOR YOU IS NOT NORMALLY HOW THAT WORKS, CUPCAKE

-

Mary whispering to Jack to ask if Lucifer is making him do it - aww

But, again, coercion where it feels like it’s all Jack’s idea is the most successful.

Jack like, everything is going to be fine, at the 20 minute mark of the season finale. Hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

-

So, uh, what happened to Maggie? She nervously asks “does it matter?”

It matters to Sam to deal with this.

“I never saw his face, but I saw his eyes.” Uhoh. What’s this??

-

You know I’m throwing a middle of the episode spec out there, while Jack and Lucifer stargaze together, that the odd person Jensen filmed as is From Space.

-

UHOH

-

Michael’s coming in?

-

Bobby drags Mary away

They need to get married

-

What are you even doing shooting at him?

-

CAS

-

Oh dear, Michael and Dean talking

-

Michael wanting to purge the planet of sin sure is direct. And he’s starting with Dean as his first sinner.

-

SAM IS PRAYING TO JACK

-

WE NEED YOU

-

Jack!!!!

“I heard your prayer” <3

Is Dean okay?

I don’t care about Lucifer flapping in

Uh, Sam’s reaction to that?

-

Dean’s alive, I think Sam is like… peaced out to tattooine in his head at the sight of Lucifer

-

Wow Jack is crushing Michael… Lucifer is amazed because he’s NEVER been strong enough to fight his brother with decisive strength.

Because he is a big fucking weenie.

-

“Lucifer, we had a deal!”

LOL even when you aren’t his real brother because you’re just from the AU, you would be the one to wreck everything for Lucifer :’D Like blurting out some nonsense at the big family dinner about his latest fuck up… Teehee. Pass the turkey, says Michael, unconcerned, while the rest of the family gasps and grandma faints.

Can’t trust anyone, can you, Jack? This is what Mary was talking about last episode that Jack would see Lucifer’s true colours.

-

“Lucifer gets you and Michael gets everything else.” Honestly, Dean didn’t even need to be in the same UNIVERSE when that was going down to know what sort of deal was cut, right down to the exact phrasing. He knows Lucifer so well >.>

-

You know, everyone is so pissed at Lucifer, Michael might just sneak out while they’re having their family moment

-

What a surprise, Lucifer killed Maggie.

-

“He’s a hater! He’ll say anything to get you on his side!” LOL LOL LOL Lucifer probably engages in internet trolling when he’s got nothing better to do with his time.

-

“TELL ME THE TRUTH” and Jack compells Lucifer, and his eyes go iris-Jack, with gold veins.

-

Jack, Lucifer is an assbutt

-

“You’re not my father. You’re a monster.”

FINALLY

-

Hahahahahahahahah Lucifer raging at Jack. It’s awful. Just melt him.

Oh my god he’s on full on rage meltdown.

“Everything you told me was a lie.”  
“That’s because I told you what you wanted to hear, man!”

What so now it’s JACK’S fault you lied? :P

-

“So what, I killed the girl! Big deal, she’s a human, she doesn’t matter!”

“SO AM I”

Sam’s reaction eyebrows are the most amazing reaction he’s ever had. Like. Damn. That’s my son. MY SON. I HAVE A - *looks over to Lucifer with the hardened steel resolve of a Sam Winchester who has just taken the no.1 dad mug out from under Lucifer’s nose and crushed it in his fist then dropped all the little pieces in front of Lucifer*

But like, all in less than a second, internally

-

“You’re too much like your mother.”

:3

-

JACK NO YOU SHOULD HAVE MELTED HIM ALREADY

-

LEAVE MY NOUGAT CHILD ALONE

-

HOLY SHIT LUCIFER YOU ARE THE WORST AND I HATE YOU

-

SAM NO.1 DAD WINCHESTER DIVES IN TO PROTECT HIS NOUGAT SON AND THE PROPHECIES ARE TRUE

DEAN N CAS ARE ALONE TOGETHER AT LAST

Except, I guess, Michael.

Also their son and brother were just stolen from in front of their eyes so.

-

SAMMY

-

LEAVE NOUGAT SON ALONE LUCIFER

Poor little thing’s human now.

-

is this how we get Michael!Dean? Dean offers himself to save Jack and Sam because poor Christian Keyes has had it because Jack smushed him?

-

Dean if the next thing out of your mouth out of “banged up meatsuit” is “thankfully I am a prime piece of ass” I’m gonna cry

“No. What if, you have your sword?”

I don’t think Cas has a soul any more, because I just saw it leave his body.

-

I am going to squish this fucking Porg flat

-

I do not want to see Jensen Ackles walk into a room and say “hello brother” to Lucifer

-

Ew Lucifer’s break up speech to Sam ew ew ew ew

interesting how Michael held up Dean by the throat and now Lucifer holds up Sam by the throat - the paralleling of these AWFUL BROTHERS to each other and their respective vessels. Michael is still stanning some sort of gross righteousness to wipe the world of sin, like Dean was talking about ridding the world of monsters to Sam. Sam and Lucifer have been squabbling over the No1 Dad mug, and now Sam won it they’re in full on rivalry for Jack.

-

Oh Jack you brave cookie

-

STOP PUNCHING HIM

-

you better get smushed this episode Lucifer I swear to fucking GOD

-

Sam will run in if he sees his son being punched. He will willingly grapple Lucifer for Jack. I CRY

-

“Daddy Sammy coming to the rescue”

“He’s got looots of blood on his hands,” Lucifer says, gesturing a Jack who’s bloody all over his face from the nose Lucifer broke

“I don’t care, he’s family.”

“What’s family done for anybody?”

Oh god, he’s going to kill Jack to prove to Sam how family sucks, isn’t he?

HE’s GOING TO MAKE JACK KILL SAM?

At least his theatrics mean that there’s time for Michael to show up

-

Omg, Zachariah! Hey! I hate you but so much less than Lucifer I’m legit happy to see you! I’ll do a pastel edit in your honour or something

-

“Dean, no.”

-

“I’m your perfect vessel. With me you’ll be stronger than you’ve ever been. If we work together, can we beat Lucifer?”

“DEAN.”

“CAN WE?”

“We’d have a chance.”

“Dean. You can’t!”

“Lucifer has Sam. He has Jack. I DON’T HAVE A CHOICE.”

BAM there it is. Dean has no choice in the matter. NO CHOICE.

-

You’ll be free one day, poppet.

-

Oh Cas.

-

Yeah, Dean bargains for control. Good.

-

Sam and Jack, just stay where you are.

“No.”

-

Oh, great, now they have to decide who has to die to save all the life in the universe.

I’m guessing Sam will die for Jack… Also that means Jack goes from being about to melt Lucifer to confronted with having to stab No.1 Dad

or no.1 Dad will do it to himself

-

Jack’s like no don’t stab me, no.1 dad, I trusted youuu

-

“Kill me.”

-

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

-

JACK DON’T YOU DARE TRY AND STAB YOURSELF EITHER

-

Which is where Jack stabbing himself repeatedly in 13x02 is extra awful now

-

“I love you. I love all of you.”

Uh so did Jack indirectly confirm that Cas said “I love you” to Dean in the singular and everyone else in the plural?

-

STOP

-

Jesus, took your time, Deanchael. (Pronounced: dinkle)

-

I HATE IT THANKS NOW I HAVE TO SEE THIS GIF OF DEAN SPREADING HIS WINGS ON MY DASH FOREVER

-

Did you leave Cas at home

-

He would take 13 seasons to make a fucking entrance, probably maybe hopefully still in control in a way, while possessed.

-

“Dean?” Sam asks, after seeing that, presumably like, are you in there?  
“Hiya sammy.” Not sarcastically! In Dean Voice! It’s Dean?

-

seriously is Cas at home

-

Dean’s VOICE in this chapel, with the angelic echo on it. Holy SHIT.

“Turns out he and I have something in common. We both want to gut your ass.” Noice.

-

That kick suddenly makes me think, jesus christ, has the fight guy for this season just been warming up while showing us how badass Dean is in a fight since the start?

-

Kinda has

But fights in wires are still kinda objectively hilarious no matter how brutal

-

Sam and Jack just standing there with 2 copies of the Archangel Blade

-

Oh thank fucking god someone finally stabbed that fucker with something that looked like it might stick

-

I have to HOPE that Michael just got burnt out of Dean, who is upright again

-

YESSSSSSSSS BURNTY WING PRINTY

A BRAVE NEW WORLD

-

SOMEONE HUG THE FUCKING NOUGAT CHILD

-

SAM AND JACK HUG THIS INSTANT

-

SAM IS LAUGHING WHAT THE  HELL

-

AW COME ON GIVE SAM MORE THAN A SECOND TO LAUGH

HE WAS HAPPY

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN SAM WINCHESTER HAPPY?

HE COULD TASTE THE COCKTAILS AND FEEL THE SUN IN HIS HAIR AND THE SAND BETWEEN HIS TOES

-

I ought to be worried about Dean but if he’s turned into like, Mr Fizzles or Glythor or Zombie!Michael or whatever, we sorta knew it was coming, and only losing Dean can possibly balance the fact he just FUCKING KILLED LUCIFER THANK FUCK

-

Literally, the meta concept of the show is dancing around like “DABBY IS FREEEEEE”

I meant to type dobby but typed dabby but you know what

-

“WE HAD A DEAL”

Oh well

-

Nice. I’m going to love dying over how Jensen will act this for a while.

-

Sam, take 3 deep breaths, turn around, and stare at Lucifer dead on the floor, and take a photo on your phone camera and email it to yourself, right now. RIGHT NOW. This is your happy place.

You will get through this.

Go to the happy place.

Open up the file marked FUCK YOU.jpg

you will get through this

-

OH CAS HONEY

-

Are you crying?

I think he’s crying

I don’t like it

-

Great, so that’s the last time I see Cas for months, and it’s worse than 9x23 and “he’s dead” as far as Cas expressions go. I mean thanks for the fucking Destiel angst, Dabb, but fuck you.

-

At least Michael is going to play into SERIOUS Jensen suit porn desires.

-

Okay, but.

Like, the bright side is: you have now adopted an adorable human boy, your mom and real dad have a thing going together, Sam was genuinely happy for the first time in his fucking life and

…

Cas is in next season.


End file.
